Far South of I-10

Dominos of Doom

2011-10-23T16:23:00.000-07:00

Reading Zerohedge the past couple of years it's easy to see DOOM
approaching. Now DOOM really seems to be just weeks or months away
for the Euro, probably pretty close for US banks as well, one thing
seems really obvious to me. All credit default swaps should be
cancelled and they should be made illegal.

Banks buy cds' to hedge against losses, but really they just make an
entangled alliance of risk. Banks think they are hedged, so there
is no risk and they can be even more leveraged. When one domino falls
they are all going to blow up like the scene in Finding Nemo, where a
falling torpedo sets off all the mines around the submarine that Nemo
and Dory are hiding in. boom.

Instead of hedging the risk the cds' are just propagating the risk
around the world, and who knows how much of it there is. why they
weren't outlawed after 2008 made me lose the little bit of faith
I had in the congress.

If the OWS people want to protest something concrete they should be
demanding the end to TBTF, and CDS' instead of just demanding cheap
pot.

Steve Jobs bought me a car

2011-10-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

When I got to use the mechanincal engineering department's Mac SE's
back in 1988, I was amazed, compared to the vt100 terminals or
DOS box's we had it was beamed in from another world. My parents asked
me what computer to buy in 1998 and I said buy an iMac. Tricky to use
dialup on that, but my young relatives were able to create creepy
speeches using the speech synthesizer. Around 2002/2003 I was sitting in
a cubicle in houston listening to music playing from the adjacent
cubicle, and it never repeated. over days and of music, it was
always different. I finally went around the corner and asked how
are you doing that? and my neighbor showed me his iPod. I saw that
and immediately looked up aapl stock and saw that it had almost as
much cash as market cap. I used the only gambling money I had, which
was the remains of my dot-bomb account on etrade and bought 2k worth
of aapl.

If I had kept more of it longer or bought more I could have been rich, instead
i made enough to buy a car. I'll give myself credit that I can recognize genius when I see something like an ipod for the first time, but true genius is the guy who could create something like an ipod, or iphone (my iphone 1 being stolen still hurts), an ipad or Mac air, and not compromise with the people who must have been there saying
don't spend the money on designing a new interface, just sell what we have
and maintain profitability.

True genius.

Anyway. sad that you are gone, I hope you find peace.

September 11th - 10 years later

2011-09-11T05:49:00.000-07:00

I was watching cnbc when they broke into live coverage of
the premarket with video of the first tower that was hit.
We had just gone to New York on vacation 2 weeks before, and
we went into the south tower to Windows on the World, but
they wouldn't let us on the roof, it was raining slightly.
I said don't worry, we'll come back to New York another time.
-doh. When they showed the first tower was on fire, I said
"that's the building we didn't go into" and I went back to
eating my cereal. I with my head down in the feedbag I didn't
see the 2nd plane hit, just the resulting red glow of the
steel after the fireball subsided.

Strangely enough, we left home. I brought my wife to school
and I went to the office. Even with war starting I was scheduled
to go offshore the next day and I had to do some preparatory
work on a unix box at the office. My boss called from NO
and said they were evacuating and I could go home too, but
I wasn't finished yet, so I rolled a tv out of a conference room
into the hallway where I could hear it. Every website
I knew was down, it wan't until later in the afternoon that
I discovered Instapundit, so I was stuck listening while
software slowly ground through some data. When they said
that the south tower had collapsed, I couldn't believe it,
I pictured the top falling off, or partially collapsing. I
couldn't picture the building collapsing because it was so
freaking huge. Just seeing it on tv didn't describe it's size
you had to walk around it, and look up from the base to see
up the dizzying heights to appreciate how giant those buildings
were. I didn't imagine it collapsing into a pile of dust and
twisted steel.

I finally finished and went home, then I went offshore that
night, arriving to fourchon at 5:30 to take one of the last
helicopters that week, because they shut down all helicopters
as well later that day. I spent the next week working in
a logging cabin, and reading about what had happened on
blogs, the best information was on Jerry Pournelle's
page The stories about firefighters running up the stairs
to the 75th story were pretty amazing, but the most amazing was
the story of Rick Rescorla, who was singing Men of Harlech while
getting his people to evacuate, and staying until the building
collapsed around him.

Men of Harlech

Men of Harlech stop your dreaming
can't you see their spear points gleaming
see their warrior pennons streaming
to this battle field

Men of Harlech stand ye steady
Let it not be ever said ye
For this battle were unready
Welshmen do not yield

From the hills rebounding
Let the war cry sounding
Summon all, the clarion call
the mighty foe surrounding

Men of Harlech on to glory
This will ever be your story
keep these stirring words before ye
Welshmen do not yield

Fight for father, sister, mother,
Each is bound to each as bother;
And with faith in one another,
We will win or die!
Tho' our mothers may be weeping,
Tho' our sisters may be keeping
watch for some who now are sleeping;
On the battlefield,

Still the trumpet's braying,
Sounds on ever saying,
Let each bowman pierce a foe,
And never stop the slaying,

Till invaders learn to fear us,
And no Saxon linger near us;
Men of Wales! our God doth hear us,
Never will we yield!

We'll not die, be conquered never
Harlech, Harlech, lives forever
Freedoms' from the greatest giver
Freedom is our good.
See how Welshmen shouting run down
from the moutains they do come down
Like a storm that strikes at sun down
boil up like a flood.

Welshmens strength has made her
Freedom's strong crusader
Swords of Welsh men have cut deep
the heart of the invader

The sword is met, by sword replying
steel on steel on strength relying
See where Gwyers' flag is flying
Freedom's in her blood.

President Obama, bestest writer ever

2011-08-30T06:04:00.000-07:00

A good article at American Thinker showing that
the President's earlier writing at the law review
that is as grammatically impaired as mine, miraculously
changes to become the best memoir eva'.

The comments are even funnier, one comment suggesting
that the grammatically impaired are an oppressed minority.
(Sing it brother)

I don't think it's so terrible to be a writer of turgid
prose, my writing varies from turgid to incomprehensible if
I stray off the technical writing dry bones footpath.
I do think the press should have done it's job a couple
of years ago, and written articles like this before the election.

The election is coming up, the mainstream press is already in
full attack mode on the rethuglicans (I've been called worse, I'd
wear tea-bagger as a badge of honor if I ever get the chance).
It would be interesting to see some unbiased strait reporting
of the realities of the presidential candidates. I like Rick Perry
because when I lived in Texas I never heard his name, which is exactly
what I want from the government But maybe he was just playing possum.
Who is he really? Is the only way to find out who a politician is to
elect them to a higher office? To find out what's in a bill, pass it?
Is this a christmas present or a bomb? I don't know, let's crowd in
close and open it. Not the best technique.

This kind of war

2011-08-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

I'm reading "This Kind of War" by T.R. Fehrenbach, which is a history
of the Korean Conflict. Fehrenbach has now become my favorite writer
of History, taking over the spot from Barbara Tuchman (Guns of August).
He also wrote a fantastic history of Mexico that explains why this
country is the way it is. (Fire and Blood, a history of Mexico).

In the same way that Fire and Blood really does a good job of
describing Mexico in such a way that what is happening today
is easy to predict, "this kind of war" tells the story of Korea
in such a gripping way that it is hard to put down. It is also
apparent to me that much of our relationship with China has it's
seeds in the Korean Conflict.

The tale begins with the North Koreans sweeping south over both the
ROK armies as well as ill-trained, ill-equipped american soldiers who
are no longer the professional army of the 1930's, but one that has
been gutted by congressional reforms to make it nicer. The UN forces
finally overcome the NK's and drive them up to the Yalu when they
are almost overwhelmed by the Chinese.

I've read other books and seen movies (even MASH showing the 'buguouts')
that imply what happened, but always presenting US victory as foregone
conclusion. Dr Fehrenbach's book really brings to life the struggle
faced by the army and marines while fighting a limited war.

It is also more apparent to me that the normal presentation of chinese
troops either being Russian catspaws, or allies of the North Koreans isn't
so true, it really was a war between the USA and China, with a slight
veneer of North Koreans and some tech assistance from Russia.

We've mostly forgotten that we fought a bloody war with the Chinese just
60 years ago, but I'm not so sure that the Chinese have. In the letter
that MacArthur published that got him fired, he speaks about how the chinese
have not enough manufacturing to support a modern army, and it would be
possible for the USA to use just a few nukes to completely remove their
industrial capacity. Dr Fehrenbach goes into detail about how MacArthur's
letter upset embassy's around the world.

I imagine the comments about china's backwardness and lack of industry
really hit home in China. In the USA the Korean conflict is long forgotten,
the 50,000 men who died have a nice memorial in washington. Maybe
it's not so forgotten in China and has been a major driver of
the competitiveness and the willingness to spend almost any amount
of money to shut down american industries.

I guess we'll see in a few years, if they have evil intentions we're
almost at that point whatever nefarious plan they have can come to fruition.
If there is no nefarious plan, just plain old mercantilism the same
result could happen, probably just slightly less gloating will occur.

S'scusi, dove il bar?

2011-07-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

The song "not now john" by pink floyd is stuck in my head
today, or more specifically the refrain that says "Fuck all that!"
sung by the backup singers.

Nobody hurt he says

2011-07-07T05:46:00.000-07:00

Glenn Reynolds mentioned this article in the NYtimes that shows
how fewer mexicans want to go to the USA now, there are more opportunities
here in Mexico, fewer in the USA and the border region is dangerous.
(I'd bet on number 3, no matter how bad the economy I don't imagine many
suburbanites doing hard labor like picking lettuce for $2/hr)

Glenn then snarks that our employment situation is bad enough in
the USA that Americans will soon be sneaking across the border the
other way. I nearly snorted some coffee out of my nose when I realized
he was talking about me. I nearly had a job offer in the USA last
year when Macondo happened, and then the blowout killed any chance
I had. The deepwater drilling ban killed our operations offshore,
and got a lot of people fired/retired/transferred out.

When Obama implies that no one really lost their job due to his ban,
he shows his ignorance of how the world works. A minimum wage cleanup
job is not the same as technical offshore worker's wage. So thanks
Obama for keeping me an expat. (I'm not saying he shouldn't have
stopped drilling to review the licensing process, but he could have
done it like I suggested here last June)

Slip sliding away

2011-05-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

The New Orleans times picayune has a good article on
the Morganza spillway, with a map showing where the water
will be diverted to lower the risk of flooding in New Orleans.

I didn't know that the Morganza spillway and Atchafalaya spillway
cover almost the same route. I lived for a couple of years
in the atchafalaya spillway in Butte La Rose (french for Rose's
Butt, I don't know who Rose was). It was pretty stupid to live
there, it was a great fishing camp, but I was single and working
offshore. When I got home, there was no food and it was 15 miles
to henderson on a levee road, so I subsisted mostly on what I could
buy at the local bait shop, beer and chips.

When I first moved there I fished almost every day from the dock.
Fishing and drinking is quite respectable, but after a while catching
fish really just got in the way of drinking. Also, since
my water discharge line was right below the dock I never ate anything
I caught, I think I just caught the same 5 fish over and over.

I crushed all my cans and kept them, thinking I would recycle them.
Finally I gave them to an old guy collecting cans on the side of the
road. Two 50 gallon bags of crushed cans, I thought the old guy was
going to kiss me.

Luckily, the owner asked me to move out because someone wanted to buy
the camp, and I moved back to Lafayette, otherwise I'd probably still be living
out there, or working as the assistant of the old guy picking up cans
on the side of the road.

I'm glad it looks like Butte La Rose won't be as flooded as
they were predicting earlier in the week. I really liked it out there,
it's just not a good first home.

You can never go home again

2011-05-10T19:49:00.000-07:00

Coyote blog has a link to a great set of pictures at
"how to be a retronaut", all taken in a video arcade cerca 1982.

Since I spent most of my disposable income one quarter at
a time, that brings back memories. What game was my favorite
depends on the year...Galaxian, then Galaga, Asteroids,
star castle, elevator action, any game where you got to
sit down and pretend to be a pilot for 3 minutes. I was
probably best at Star Wars, but I cheated by working at an
ice cream shop that had that one game. If no one was there
I was playing. (I should have studied instead, the Jedi
never came to ask my help)

Game of thrones

2011-05-09T17:52:00.000-07:00

Mexico was a week ahead on Thor, and it's a month behind on
Game of thrones, so I didn't get to see the first one until last
night. Not bad. Everything according to the book, graphics
look good, some decent acting. I detected a slight drift towards
a revenge of the sith filming technique, Darth Vader horribly
burned... check. Direwolf puppies found...check. It was
good enough that I'm looking forward to next Sunday.

Strangely enough, I watched Clash of the Titans right before,
and I liked that movie. Much better than the other version with
the guy from LA Law. (I summon google...shazam...Harry Hamlin)
(Why doesn't google do that, right mouse click, google search my
last sentence. Shazam.)

The next book in the Song of Ice and Fire series comes out in July.
It's something I'll have to buy on the kindle just for safety reasons,
a hard-back 1000 page book can easily smother you if you fall asleep
while reading. Kindle, it's for safety (tm).

Twitterfied

2011-05-08T09:43:00.000-07:00

I signed up for twitter, @joegremlin. I don't know how much
I'll use it, but it seems much more phone-sized then blogger.
By the time I navigate to blogger on my phone and peck out a few
words I've forgotten what I wanted to say. Twitter is already
limited to about how much I have time to say, so it could be a
good fit.

I'm following several financial type people (Cramer, Alltucher, Ritholtz,
and a few celebrities. Best thing I've seen is Marina Orlova @hotforwords.
I didn't know etymology could be so interesting.

We'll see how it goes, I spend so much time traveling that I don't have time
to blog, I should be able to twitter more frequently. Same basic topics,
no work or family, just travel, finance, politics, books and movies.

Hi Ho, the son of a bitch is dead!

2011-05-02T05:54:00.000-07:00

I've never been so happy to hear about someone being killed.
I went to bed before they announced it, so I woke up to a chat
message from my wife saying "felicitaciones!"

Off to buy some sweets to bring to work.

Ravenna, revisited

2011-03-22T06:35:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Ravenna for a conference this week, the weather is
cool and crisp, all the Italians are beautiful in their
scarfs and boots, the only change I can detect after 6 months
absence is my bank has been renovated and the people that work
there have become efficient and friendly. (2 years here, no one in
that bank was ever friendly, is there something in the water?)

I went to visit our old neighbors and they gave me an excellent
lunch, spagetti a la speck and vitello and about 9 glasses of
wine and noccino. I need to go up to the office and say hi, but
I suspect I'm too drunk to go at the moment, I may have to go
in the morning. doh.

I like Mexico, the people work really hard, and I fit in because
I look like I could drive a bus there. I really love Italy, I
just could never fit in, everyone here is tall and elegantly
dressed, and even if I bought new clothes here I'd look like a
bus driver wearing Italian clothes.

Italy is like a country filled with the cool people from high school,
all dressed right, even if it's a battered old coat they manage
to pull off being cool. The food is just right, wine is perfect,
but every time I try an italian wine outside of Italy it's crap,
as if here is a bubble of perfectness, once you carry things out
of here they take up the local properties. Maybe Italianness isn't
exportable like French wines or irish beer.

Machiavelli and Muamar

2011-03-19T08:41:00.000-07:00

It looks like Sarkozy is actively starting the no fly zone
over Libya. I think it's too late and the USA will lose credibility
and create another enemy, from yahoo:

After weeks of hesitation and divisions among his advisers, President Barack Obama on Friday endorsed military action against Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, saying U.S. values and credibility are at stake to stop "the potential for mass murder" of innocents.

I hope it's not, but I think it's too late to help the rebels,
and without going all the way for regime change we'll have pissed
off a guy with a lot of oil income and an army, we'll be looking
at blowback for the next 20 years. As Machiavelli said:

"Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge."

If they had done something a few weeks ago, it would have been
like Afganistan in 2001, just a few cia guys with laser designators
and a few planes with LGB's. Muamar's forces are mostly mercenaries,
just a few magic bombs that kill large groups with unerring accuracy
and they would have headed back home without waiting for paychecks.
That's really the only hope here, (it would have been much easier
back on the coast road though) as Machiavelli said:

mercenaries are disunited and without discipline; bold among friends, yet cowardly among enemies; they have no fear of God, and keep no faith with men. In a word, they are unreliable. If a nation, against his advice, relies on mercenaries for its protection, it keeps its ruin at bay only so long as it can postpone an attack.

(I couldn't find the exact quote, my copy of the prince is still in
a box amongst 25 other boxes of books. I really admire Machiavelli,
when I toured the Palazzo Vecchio I was very interested to see his
office. The Prince is biting satire, but still mostly good advice
if you want to be evil)

It really annoys me that no one in this super intelligent administration
read the prince, or read the history of the africa corps in WW2.
The coast road is the key, the rest of the country is desert. All
of the battles were at one end of the road or the other, in the
middle they were chases supported by air support. It would have been
easier to redeem the full faith and credit of the USA if things were
done two weeks ago.

If I were king, I'd go all out now and shut down the Libyan air force
now and land the marines behind the mercenaries south of bengazi. I
would bet they'd fold up their tents and go home without us having to
retake a city by force.

Japan Syndrome

2011-03-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

I was thinking that the worst thing that would happen
would be a melt down that would stay in containment, but
this guy says it could be worse:

If workers are unable to get additional cooling water into the reactor vessel, the molten fuel core will collapse into the water in bottom of the vessel. Eventually the heat from the decaying fuel would boil away the water that's left, leaving the core sitting on the vessel's lower head made of steel.

Should that happen, "It'll melt through it like butter," Allen said.

That, in turn, would cause a "high-pressure melt injection" into the water-filled concrete cavity below the reactor. Because the concrete would likely be unheated, the reaction created by the sudden injection of the reactor's ultra-hot content would be immense, he said.

"It'll be like somebody dropped a bomb, and there'll be a big cloud of very, very radioactive material above the ground," Allen said, noting that it would contain uranium and plutonium, as well as the fission products.

I'll say it now: GAH!

That sounds uncomfortably close to what was described in the China
Syndrome.

Tsunami and nukes

2011-03-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

Here we only have Fox and Cnn international and
neither one ever says anything new, they keep talking
about the nukes, when even the worst case exposures would
be a few REM. I've worked with logging sources, and over
about one year I got around 600 mREM, to no negative effect
(twitch twitch). When they mention a dose of 400 uSieverts,
that is a pissant's fart worth of radiation.
[edited after I had a cup of coffee, i meant dose, not rate]

What they seem to be missing is the rest of coastal northern Japan
has been nearly wiped out, the nytimes has an article about
several small towns that were hit by 60' waves. I don't see
how the death toll can't be less then 30 or 40k. Hopefully
no one in the government or the navy is watching Fox, they
need to move ships and helicopters to the more remote towns
where they can do some good.

I would bet the only real danger would be to the 50 guys who
have to go in and fight the fires and keep the plant cool. I
hope they are rotating them enough that no one gets more than
several REMs, and not doing the chernobyl technique of sending in
50 men to die.

Tsunami

2011-03-13T11:49:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to work on a presentation for next week, with
around 20 ppt presentations open as I shuffle slides around,
but I keep going back to various news sites to see what is
happening in Japan. The videos of the tsunami are much worse
on the net, when they showed the water crossing farmland on
CNN friday it looked like a thin film of water seeping across
fields.

My scale was wrong, watching the full video on
the web, the water is carrying houses and cars and even a
boat that must have set the record for farthest inland boat.
In the video, finally the water approches another town with
a highway with cars that are stopping because they see that
the thin film of water is bearing down on them. One white
car pulled off the road, reversed direction and was last seen
leaving ahead of the water, but the helicopter cameraman
didn't keep him in frame. The guy must have had a pretty
horrifying rear view mirror view.

Even in the most prepared country in the world, if the disaster
is big enough no one is coming to help for 3 days. yikes.
We're out of the Oughts, this crap should stop now.

President Carter redux

2011-03-12T08:44:00.000-08:00

I'm watching CNN as the worst case scenario seems to be
unfolding in Japan. Once again the question is edging towards
"why isn't the US Navy there yet?", and the CNN announcer doesn't
seem to understand that the Pacific is freaking big, anything not
there in Japan won't be there for a few days.

The next story blinks up; Qkadafy is taking the city of Ras Lanuf,
and I really don't see how the rebels can win without outside help.
One side has more modern weapons and air support, the other side has
15 year old boys and 30 year old weapons. I'd ask again, where is the
US Navy?

Two big problems doom the rebellion in Libya by preventing outside
assistance (meaning help from the USA). The intervention clock has
been reset to 1990, it's a bipolar or tripolar world again and we need
the consent of Russia and China to work through the UN. (not happening)
We also have the 1990 post-vietnam(Iraq) perspective of we don't want
to get involved in something that probably would become a quagmire.

The other problem is Arab fatigue. We really don't know the language,
culture or beliefs of anyone there, and my give a fuck level is very
low with anything that happens south or east of Italy. Neptunus Lex
says it better:

It would be the profoundest irony if, after having broken our hearts and the bodies of our youth for nearly 10 years now in the Middle East we have come to the conclusion that “these people” cannot be saved at precisely the same moment when they finally became ready for salvation.

Because that’s what just happened, if you weren’t paying attention: We’ve gotten tired of them. We’re tired of their ululations, their savagery and their conspiracy theories. We’re tired of their backwardness, sloth, dependency and fatalism. We’ve gotten tired of trying to accommodate a modern day, pluralistic and tolerant society to the religious dictates of a military adventurer dead some 1400 years.

The same people that called me a facist motherfucker in 2003 are the same
dickheads saying we should intervene in Libya. My GAF level is low enough that President Carter's dithering over the problem doesn't send me writing emails
hither and yon to various congressmen that could be representing me. More of
a sense of a missed opportunity, we've recreated an enemy in Libya by Carter's calling for him to go, but didn't do anything to make him go. I don't think the current President Carter included "The Prince" in his extensive, elite education.

[just to translate from Joe to english: I'd support support the current
President Carter if he'd do his job and swat khadafy duck, and I think that
is a consistent position. Hussein was a dick and he made war on us, we made
war on him and now he's gone. Khadafy is a dick, and has made war on us off
and on for 30 years, he should be made to go, not told to go. Don't do a
powerful enemy a small hurt]

War. huh. what the hell it's good for, absolutely nothing

2011-02-28T19:37:00.001-08:00

I'm watching Anderson Cooper and the same dickwads from
eight years ago are on there, (wolfowitz and wesley clark)
how we should invade libya or give arms to the rebels or
set a no fly zone. Clark mentioned that he doesn't want
troops in there until there is legal support from the UN.
Of course the US had UN resolutions against Iraq that supported
removing Saddam, yet now 'War is Good'. grrrrr.

If the USA is going to attack Ghadafy, the congress should pass
a declaration of war. People that are for it now can't say later
they didn't vote for WAR, they voted for war. Declare war, say
the aim is to take Ghadafy out of power, then the 6th fleet sweeps
all aircraft out the sky over Libya and drops an LGB on daffy duck.

This video says it all

Oil, Oil everywhere, i'll take me a drink.

2011-02-23T19:31:00.000-08:00

Jerry Pournelle has a nice short essay about the craziness
going on around the world. Just to quote the end:

I long ago concluded that we are not capable of guarding the liberty of the people of the Near East, and that we ought to develop our own energy resources. I see no reason to change my views, although it will be far more expensive now. It will only get more expensive in future. We need to drill for oil, build nuclear power plants, and develop natural gas. Those ought to be our first priorities. Once we have energy we can use it to build those green facilities that we are told will save the planet, but if we cannot save ourselves, we certainly cannot save the planet.

I like reading JP probably because I agree pretty closely with
what he says, and he's able to say it without stupid or offensive
jokes. He was against the Iraq war from the beginning, I was
lukewarm for it until it started, then I felt the war should be
supported without being lukewarm.

Where we agree most strongly is on energy. The lunacy of sending
billions of dollars per month to countries that would nuke us if
they could get away with it is astonishing. Having to watch every
oil industry cycle where the price goes up and then crashes, each
time more of the US oil industry is destroyed and we end up importing
more.

Energy is the key. We've got a few trillion left on our mastercard,
we should be building up energy self sufficiency. If the dollar is
worthless at some point, imported energy will be prohibitively
expensive and it might be too late to stop the final spiral down
to 19th century agrarianism, with internet. (very little travel,
and what does occur happens by slow train) "The sheep look up" by
John brunner type outcomes. Or is it Stand on Zanzibar?

Part of the problem is politicians and people enjoy the point in the
cycle when everything is crashed, and gas is $1 again. All the
alternative energy industries reset back to zero, and people go
back to buying hummers (not the good kind). I'm with the greenies
slightly in thinking that fuel prices need to be higher than 90 cents
per gallon. One way to do that is now that oil is $100/bbl again,
setting an import tax on oil to keep a minimum price, somewhere
between $50-$80/bbl, and apply if for natural gas as well to keep
nat gas prices north of $3.5/cu ft.

That will make nukes look cheaper, and solar look cost effective
in some areas, or at least it won't totally kill the US energy
industry every 5 years.

Some other things are still needed of course, convert all trucks
to run on natural gas. Build nukes and clean coal,etc. But anything
we can do to keep money in the US will help build the long term
future.

Coon skin and Muamar hide; makes a pair of jump boots just the right size*

2011-02-22T19:36:00.000-08:00

The Gomorgans ask why we don't oblige Muamar Khadafy
and make him a martyr. President Reagan tried in the 80's,
I don't expect anything to be tried now, maybe another speech or two.

Ghettoputer does make the point that Khadafy looks like either
like Jack Nicholson after a rough night, or a sand people from
star wars. I vote sand people.

*from an AFROTC running cadence, or Jodie, I can't remember it exactly
various animals attack, then make a pair of jump boots just the right
size, until the last verse we meet up with Muamar. He was an asshole
murderer in 1987, and he's still an asshole murderer.

New Kindle, old books

2011-02-19T08:10:00.000-08:00

Amazon was nice enough to send me a new kindle to replace my dead one.
It's been dead for a while, and I had given it up as a wasted $400.
I finally got around to calling them, and they agreed that the old kindle
was dead and shipped a new one here to Mexico, and are even paying the shipping to return the old one to the USA. Amazing Amazon.

The only disappointment was the shipping email said they were sending a
kindle 2, but a kindle 1 showed up. The whispernet doesn't work outside
the US, with a kindle 1 I still need to connect up to a computer and
drag and drop the files. (What drudgery! he complains; instead of being
stuck in the wilds of mexico with just books in espanol to read...I can
buy any book I want with just a cable)

I'll probably start with "the big short" by Michael Lewis, and a book
by Seth Godin, who's blog is a dally read; he's like the Army, he
generates more ideas before breakfast than most people generate all day.

I did cheat and download a book from project gutenberg, just to have
something immediately, and it's the "Three Musketeers". You can't
beat a book by Alexandre Dumas for quick excitement, but the book has
changed since I read it as a boy, now I see Michael York in every scene,
the memory of the movie has overwritten my memories of the book.

Rainy day, planes trains and apocalypse

2011-02-12T05:56:00.000-08:00

Here in Southern Mexico it's been raining continuously for 3 days.
It's cool, not cold, getting down to around 60 F, but it looks
cold and miserable so it feels colder. Reading the interwebs:
Egypt, good luck, congratulations, etc. Hopefully the radicals
won't take over and the worse thing they'll chant outside the US
Embassy will be "Serious knee injury to the Great Satan".

I can see high-speed rail is back on the drawing board. I really
like trains. It's fantastic in Italy,if you live within walking distance
to a train station, you can go from your house to anywhere in Northern
Italy in just 3 hours without a car. It works perfectly in a small
country with nuclear power, everything is all electric, if the price
of oil goes to 400/bbl, train tickets stay the same while airlines
go out of business. (Italy doesn't have nukes unfortunately)

I've taken trains all over europe, the longest run I took was from
Milan to Napoli. 400 miles and 5 hours, which wasn't really that
bad because you're going not to an airport an hour outside of town
and you don't have to be there very early, so a 5 hour trip is 5
hours.

Key things that make trains successful:
- train stations are downtown
- trains are on a separate network then roads, no crossings
- passengers separate network from freight

What makes high speed rail successful:
- high speed trains are on a separate network from other trains
- all distances are within normal airplane travel time, one day travel
is possible if unpleasant
- it's all electric. at some oil price point, high speed rail will
be more efficient if the electricity is coming from coal or nukes.

France is most prepared for the future, with all their major cities
linked by nuclear powered high speed rail, when the next oil shock
kills the airline industry they'll still be ok for internal travel.
I would be ok with emulating france, creating local high speed networks
in the usa with new nukes at the same time to power them.

What I would do if I were emperor, I'd start to build local routes
of less than 400 miles with the nukes to power them and spend money
on research for even faster trains using maglev to build the cross
country routes.

There are two similar length routs (400 mi vs 387 mi) from Milan to
Naples and New Orleans to Dallas, that's about the limit I could be on
a train and still make a meeting on the same day. I found a report
that estimated the building cost for the tracks, two way tracks on
elevated cement roadway, at 20MM euros per km, which is around
$40MM per mile. A 400 mile route would cost $16 Billion.
Or a better route to start with would be the triangle between
houston-dallas-san antonio, that loop would around 720 miles, or
$29 Billion. That triangle route has lots of traffic, lots of people
moving from downtown to downtown.

The purchase of trains versus the purchase of aircraft is a wash. I doubt
we'd save much on fuel costs if you include the cost of a nuclear power
plant to power these things, but we should build them so that we have
availability of travel. We made it through the last crash with some
part of the oil industry left, but I don't see how we can make it through
an infinite number of these crashes. When prices reach $150/bbl again next
year, the economy is going to crash again, then the oil industry. We're
really just starting to ramp up now, after another crash we won't ramp up
at all, prices will just march straight back up again because production will
really be in decline. As the economy circles the drain demand destruction
will kill the price of crude because no one will be traveling.

The reason I think we should be doing this I'm starting to think it's too
late for scrubbing the budget, we're using the credit cards to pay the
mortgage, we should probably build something so that after the crash people
can still travel without having to take a pack-mule.

Irish eyes ain't smilin'

2011-02-05T21:57:00.000-08:00

During the peak of the financial crises a couple of years ago,
when it seemed possible that the entire banking system could unravel,
I was in Bucharest for a week. I was having lunch with some Romanians
and they were asking me what was going on in the USA, their pensions
were in AIG. I gave a "I'm sure everything will be fine" that I didn't
believe and felt glad that I had wired some money to Europe the week
before, I thought the dollar was going to continue sliding.

I apparently suck at financial analysis because I had sent the money
at the peak of pessimism at 1.55 eurusd, then sent most of it back at
the peak of european fear last year at 1.25. Doh. (not even doh with
exclamation point, just doh.

Someone who doesn't suck at financial analysis is Michael Lewis from
Vanity Fair. I wanted to buy his book 'the big short' in houston last
year, but I was already burdened down like juan valdez' mule and couldn't
take a hardback book with me. A lot of content from that book is online,
including the story of AIG's trading group as told to Mr Lewis by insiders.

It was good that we didn't let the Romanian's lose their pensions, but
they could have done it without making The Goldman Sachs whole, or providing
a windfall to a guy that was betting against the housing ponzi scheme
instead of screaming about the problem from the rooftops. His story
is told in The Big Short and in a really excellent excerpt we get most
of the story in "Betting on the Blind Side"

That guy Dr Burry is a genius and he deserves to get paid, but very few people
put the whole problem together like he did, and certainly no one in
the government figured it out. (I could see it was a bubble, I knew
that the mortgages were being sold off as bonds from reading 'Liar's
Poker', but I had never heard about CDS' and CDO's before 2008)
Hopefully next time someone sees Armageddon coming down the pike, they
won't just buy CDS's against meteor strikes. ("so if a 100 m tall wave
washes us away, you have to pay $2MM? I'm rich bitches. But don't tell
anyone if they don't buy my newsletter.")

I also like ML's article on the Irish disaster where the government guaranteed a bunch of bankster money, putting the irish people on the hook for a few year's worth of tax revenue instead of just dumping the bondholder's
overboard like the more sensible Icelanders did.

I hope we have a remote off switch for all those tanks

2011-01-29T19:04:00.000-08:00

I spent the day watching fox news and playing Napoleon's
campaign in Egypt. I'm making the crossing to Palestine,
and I'd bet the same invasion will be happening soon enough
if the wrong people end up in charge of Egypt.

Egypt deserves to be a republic. A good percentage of the
people in the oilfield are egyptian, and they are some of
the best educated, smartest people, switching from french
to english to arabic at the drop of a hat. Instead, according
to the pols in this article, it's going to be an Islamist
revolution.

But what do Egyptians really think? According to a recent Pew poll, they are extremely radical even in comparison to Jordan or Lebanon. When asked whether they preferred “Islamists” or “modernizers,” the score was 59% to 27% in favor of the Islamists. In addition, 20 percent said they liked al-Qaeda; 30 percent, Hezbollah; 49 percent, Hamas. And this was at a time that their government daily propagandized against these groups.

How about religious views? Egyptian Muslims said the following: 82 percent want adulterers punished with stoning; 77 percent want robbers to be whipped and have their hands amputated; 84 percent favor the death penalty for any Muslim who changes his religion.

If that's the case, I'd bet their first item on their agenda
will be taking all the rage on the streets and pointing it to
Israel. Who knows how that would go if it's M1 tank against M1 tank?

Yikes. That curse of 'may you live in interesting times' is very true,
I wish it was the end of history again

End of Weekend humor

2011-01-23T21:06:00.000-08:00

Not a very effective weekend. I had to re-revise the revisions
of the edited version of the paper I'm writing.
Apparently I'm the worst user of Word version tracking in the world,
I ended up turning off all the editing popups so I could see what
words were there. I got that sent off, and instead of jogging
around the lagito here, or doing some other work I spent the
rest of the weekend playing Total War Napolean and surfing the
web.

The game isn't too bad, not as good as Rome, and it must require
windows 7 and 32 gigs of ram, because with the 3 GB that xp32 can
use it crashes at every big battle, a couple of times saving me
from humiliation as my last few calvary got chased around the
screen.

I surfed the web and watched some movies too, since my family is
off visiting relatives. One very funny writer is on Altucher Confidential.
His writing is so open that one of the commenters suggested he must
have a brain tumor (cue Arnold "It's not a tuma").
Super funny though. Including stories about his dot-com companies, where he lost millions after making millions. It's good that he can joke about it, I lost a crapload of money but nothing like millions, and if I think too hard about it I'll have to go drink a relief beer.

Here's a clip from his story today about beginner yoga classes:

Chanting. At the beginning of class there’s a chant. It starts off with a big “Ommmm”. I can handle that. But then it goes into something else that I can’t understand. Everyone else is doing the chant. For some reason I blush and I try to hum along with it but then blush more because why am I even humming?

there's a scott adams (dilbert) rule that chanting is always funny.
Dogbert asking a prospective cult member "can you chant" is funny, humming
while pretending to chant is double funny.

The world turned upside down

2011-01-23T17:42:00.000-08:00

The funny video showing Chairman Hu in washington like
the new owner was even truer than I thought. One of the
songs the piano player played at the presidential reception
is a song from a movie about the korean war.

Linked from Althouse to the paper the epoch times:

The song Lang Lang played describes how beautiful China is and then near the end has this verse, “When friends are here, there is fine wine /But if the jackal comes /What greets it is the hunting rifle.” The “jackal” in the song is the United States....

Just from reading James Clavell novels about china and the orient it's
easy to know that they have no respect for westerners, and if this happened
in china it wouldn't surprise me at all. But this was a piano player the
USA paid for, and he provided the list of songs he was going to play to
the state department and the Chinese. Our state department doesn't have
a single person who would recognize that song and squelch it. Maybe we deserve
their disrespect.

Hey, nice stealth jet

2011-01-21T17:29:00.000-08:00

Just Dang

2011-01-17T16:57:00.000-08:00

Apparently Steve Jobs is still sick and will take
a leave of absence. I hope he gets well not just for
the sake of my apple stock, but because he seems to
create things that I really like (iPod, Pixar, iphone
and itunes). Some jerkwad in bucharest stole my iphone,
but itunes is still a big source our entertainment, for
the times when we've been tvless like the first couple of
months in Italy and before we got skytv here.

On the other hand, apple stock was the last best chance
for us to get rich. I bought it with the remainder of
my dot-bomb account when apple was $15/share. I heard
the first ipod playing in the cubicle next door...how
in the heck did so much music play without repeats I asked?
I put the 2k that hadn't boogered away during the crash
into apple.

I stupidly sold off most of it when it quadrupled, but the
remainder still has gone up 10 times. Fear and greed made
me sell at the wrong time and now hold too long. Tomorrow
the stock will probably go down $50, of course fear will
probably keep me from buying it tomorrow morning. doh.

here's what zerohedge has to say:

Below we present the top 200 holders of AAPL stock. The holdings of the smallest one in the group amount to $133 million. We are confident they will all exit the theater in a calm, collected fashion.

Past is prologue

2011-01-16T20:07:00.000-08:00

I just watched "Full Metal Jacket" for the first time since I saw
it in the theater in 1987. I watched it the first time at the BX
theatre at Chanute AFB during AF tech school. They probably should
have chosen a different movie to show there, since the whole base
was full of airmen fresh out of basic training. My main thought
after watching that was 'thank goodness I didn't join the Marine
Corp, since the crazy guy at Paris Island was playing me. I started
Basic training as the fattest slowest guy there. It took every bit
of running around for 6 weeks to burn all the fat off, not a chance
I could have made it through anything more rigorous.

Anyway, it's kind of weird the way the past is telescoping behind us.
When full metal jacket came out it was only 14 years after US combat
troops left Vietnam, and Vietnam seemed like an eternity in the past
at the time. Now it's nearly twice as long back to 1987, and really
just a blink of an eye has passed. (or as the wife says, like 10 minutes,
under water.

Kind of weird too that 20 years ago this week I started in the oilfield,
and that time definitely passed as if I was underwater. But I wouldn't
change anything, working here allowed me to meet my wife and have a
family, without the oilfield I'd probably still be turning wrenches as a jet
mech, drinking 40 oz miller lites every night. doh.

Killer Greens

2011-01-11T20:49:00.000-08:00

Over at EU referendum they point to the floods in
Australia whose effects were entirely preventable
and predictable. Similar floods have happened in the past
and flood control projects were shelved in favor of
desalination plants to deliver fresh water to a global
warming parched land.

Good irony. Here's the killer quote:

But the real story is bizarre, another classic example of the greenies forcing major distortions in policy which cost money we haven't got and eventually kill people. Increasingly we see that the obsession with global warming is not a risk-free option. It costs money we can't afford, and lives. This must stop.

Economics says we can't have everything. Choices have to be
made in order to provide shelter, water, heat and power
efficiently. Instead of choosing the most cost effective option
we're choosing the global warming mitigating option:

Windmills, solar, etc. Solar PV in germany when an insolation map would say
there is no point. Talking about windmills in the gulf of mexico
when half the year there's no wind, the other half it's too strong.
In a poor country like mexico they are talking about outlawing
incandescent bulbs so the poor people can't even have a reasonably
priced light at night.

Decision making is so terrible in all levels of government in every country.
People don't understand, when they choose something it almost always
eliminates the other options (Tanstaafl) Choose wisely, or we'll be
spending future winters in the dark and cold.

Pour encourager les autras?

2011-01-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

I didn't get to see much news this weekend, I got to
go to a bbq at a fellow gringo's house and attempted to
kill off my various stomach problems with beer and grilled
meat. Didn't work but I had fun.

I missed the ruckus over in TJICistan when after the congresswoman
got shot, TJIC snarkily said one down and 534 to go. Not LOL, but pretty clever.
Half of the libtardosphere went there and commented, what
terrible people they are that inhabit Tjicistan. (A similar situation
happened at work, a coworker pointed out an article from africa where
a guy got eaten by a lion when he went out of camp to take a leak and
I laughed. I even gave permission to laugh at me if I'm ever eaten
while taking a dump, or hang myself with a rope tied to my nuts.) Little
girl shot by nut, tragedy, not funny. Gringo killed in Army/narco crossfire,
not funny. 1 down and 534 to go is not in good taste, but is pretty funny.

It's a terrible thing that happened, but snark is always allowed.
and snarky comments shouldn't cause a visit from the FBI as some of
the commenters are hyperventilating.

After listening to libtards talking about assassinating bush
for 8 years, their gnashing of teeth over this tragedy and pinning
the blame on Palin is pretty fucking rich.

Update 23 Jan - "I Am TJIC"

Apparently his guns were taken away by the local sheriff because he's
a threat. What kind of bullshit is that? So much for free speech.

The best cracker ever

2011-01-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

I'm eating the best cracker ever, a slightly burnt saltine,
and the salty/smoky flavors are rolling across my tongue.
It's the first solid I've eaten in two days, which was the
continuation of a really sucky week. I got sick new years
eve, so sick I had to leave a party with free booze and lots
of good food. New years day every doctor in town was closed,
so I went to the emergency room and the guy there told me I have
the flu and gave me an antiviral with decongestant and Tylenol
mixed in (big honging pills that have to be taken for 10 days)

Stayed home all week, still feeling like crap, I went to an ENT
to see what was really going on, and he declared a bacterial infection
and gave me 10 giant antibiotic pills that have to be taken one
per day. I was feeling overmedicated, but better, until those
pills reacted, I ate something bad or someone gave me poison and
my digestive system as they say in the oilfield, reversed out.

The only thing comparable is being seasick on a boat for 15 hours;
with the flu; a hangover and 'irregularity'. I felt like that
point in the movie The Fly, when jeff goldblum holds the shotgun up
to his head.

Everything finally stabilized last night, and I slept like the kind
of sleep where I didn't blink awake or dream a dream, just an instant
of deep dark rest, followed a moment later by waking up in the morning
light, with my family looking at me like, "hey, you're alive". Now
I'm drinking changua caballo soup (onions and salt) and eating the best
cracker ever baked.

Chilly weather

2010-12-29T09:03:00.000-08:00

Not much to blog about lately, I have a limited scope of work for
blogging because I don't blog about the most important things in life:
family, work etc, and lately I don't really care about politics (we're
firmly on the 'we're going to have to nuke them from orbit path', so,
down the hatch!). All that leaves is travel blogging, the weather and
scatological topics, and I've been hesitant to write about where I'm at,
especially if I am north of Veracruz, up in eruption of sudden machine
gun battle territory.

That just leaves scatological themes, such as the ever insightful TJIC
being out of action due to as they say on tv; irregularity. The key
insight I could suggest was whatever you do, don't take medicine for
stomach problems, just go somewhere you have line of sight access to
a bathroom, drink liquids and rest. Also, enjoy the weight loss, the
only way I've been able to lose any weight the past few years is to
dance with Monteczuma.

So blogging will probably continue being light, until I get some
insight into some other topic, or a muse comes to visit, but lately
I've been fairly unamused.

Bucket List

2010-12-15T06:47:00.000-08:00

If taking a dump on a mexican bus while riding from Poza Rica
to Veracruz was on my bucket list, it's scratched off now. I
made the mistake of ordering something for lunch that wasn't
what I thought it was.

I asked for Steak Pimientado, which I translated as pepper
steak, a piece of hamburger with pepper. In Poza Rica, that
is translated as flank steak with black pepper, plus enough
spicy pepper that I was sweating on the back of my head. I
dove into the baked potato for some relief, it was just as
spicy if not spicier.

All in all, a very mistaken lunch, especially since I had
to take a 5 hour bus ride back to Veracruz. Not a good place
to have a tumultuous stomach, but I survived. The strange
thing is the toilet seat on the bus is spring loaded, so it
does a "no time for sargeants" salute when you get up. Adding
in the bumps on the road, the net acceleration wanted to turn me
into a toilet launched projectile.

The buses in Mexico are pretty good, the ADO Platinium
and GL buses are nicer than most planes now, and bus frequency is
similar to a good train system. There were no nice buses available
for this trip, I expected to be seated on a 1950's era school bus
with people carrying chickens, but in reality it was just the same,
slightly more crowded and without free headphones. I took a coworker's
advice and bought a 2nd child ticket for half price, and that gave me
enough room to take a nap.
buses available

Tubing the interwebs

2010-12-12T08:51:00.000-08:00

The weather down here in southern Mexico has been very cool,
lows down around 14-15 deg C. The houses here are just cinder-block
boxes with a thin film of paint and stucco, so the weather inside
feels remarkably similar to the weather outside with a time delay
due to the thermal capacity of the building. Last night it was
warm until 1 am even though it was pretty cool outside by then, but
by 6 am it felt pretty frosty inside.

I've got several presentations for work this week, plus lots of stuff
to write, but I can't seem to drink enough tea to clear out the cobwebs
today, so I'm pretty much just tubing the interwebs. A poor sort of tubing
without a 2nd tube containing an icechest of beer.

Reading Sharon over at smART, she's poetic even when describing getting out
of the hospital.

On the ride home I just looked out the window and watched the lights from the chemical plants shimmering in the dark across the Ohio River. When I was a little kid coming home from North Hills Passavant finally, I remember having the same thoughts…

What is it like to be just one light shining across the water like that, at night

It's always scary reading about being in the hospital. I hope she gets better soon.

....It's now 30 minutes later and I haven't even managed to open powerpoint.
Apart from the bitter cold 60 degree temps last night, we got a good scare
coming in the door. We opened the gate to the carport/patio area when we
arrived home and found the skytv remote inside by the gate. I was pretty
certain it meant we had been robbed of our few meager possessions (everything
is still in the shipment) and they dropped the remote when trying to lift the
tv over the wall.

I crept around the house turning on lights, with my finger ready to be
extended into pistol position (bang bang, take that fargin iceholes).
Everything was still there, unassembled sams club desk, undecorated
charlie brown christmas tree, crappiest borrowed sofa in the world
(borderline better than nothing, but thanks!) and satelitte tv/sams club
LCD TV. It turned out that a friend visiting yesterday had accidentally
picked up the remote in her purse, returning it
on a late-night ninja through the gate mission.

Houston Parking trap - Mexican Consulate

2010-12-04T14:05:00.000-08:00

We had to go to the Mexican consulate in Houston a couple of times
this week. The rules for going to the Mexican consulate are: don't
bring any electronics or cell phones, the begging guy outside wants
money not food and most importantly, don't park in the Houston City
Parking lot at the corner.

The first time I went, I didn't see the entrance to the public lot,
and there are 5 or 6 people flagging to park in private lots. I grudgingly
paid $8 to park in one, and I had to make a trip back to the lot to bring
out a handful of cell phones and gadgets.

The next day we made attempt number two for the visa and I parked in
the public lot for 50 cents per hour. I paid an hour, we went in and
came out 45 minutes later to find a ticket. They gave me a ticket because
I had reversed into the spot (as I almost always do). I saved $8 on
the flag wavers, but paid $35 to the cocksuckers at the city.

Since there is a faggot meter maid parked in the lot, I'd assume almost everyone
gets a ticket for something. I paid the ticket, but I liberally sprinkled
bad karma on the check.

Medal of Honor

2010-11-14T17:01:00.000-08:00

One good side-effect of President Obama being in
charge is the press is less in the tank against
the military. The American network (mostly cbs+Oprah)
showed a 60 minutes interview with SSgt Giunta, the
Medal of Honor winner.

If you get a chance to watch it you should. SSgt
Giunta was very modest, he said 'I haven't given
anything, Sgt Brennan gave everything.'

Where do we get such men?

Good luck America

2010-11-02T17:40:00.000-07:00

I couldn't vote today, as an expat without any local residence
it doesn't seem possible to absentee vote anywhere, but my good
wishes go with those in the tea party that seem to agree with what
I want; as small a federal government as possible, almost all government
should be within rock throwing distance.

I've tried explaining to foreigners our political system, how
America really was better than most places, and that's not just
nationalism. Unfortunately our current government isn't better,
it's not any better than Europe, and really just the dollar being
the reserve currency separates us from Mexico, where most of the
population lives in un-airconditioned cinderblock shacks, and are
the hardest working people in the world because if they don't work
they won't eat.

Our only hope is to try to dial back the clock as far back as possible.
People have to be self reliant. The government should be as the founding
fathers intended, small and mostly powerless. If most of the power and
the rights are reserved for the people, then they will be self sufficient
or starve.

The founding fathers were an amazing group, they had been educated post-
enlightenment, but still classically educated so that they knew the
dangers of too much central power. That their system worked until the
20th century as intended shows how smart they were. We don't need another
revolution, or another constitution, we just need to follow the one we have
more closely, without interpretation from liberal judges.

The first step on that road are the tea partiers running for election right
now, and people like Governor Christie in New Jersey. Hopefully the
great country of the usa will rise from it's current problems, and I won't have
to spend my declining years shaking a wrinkled fist at the CNN on the TV
from somewhere far south of I-10.

Multivax

2010-10-31T16:42:00.000-07:00

I signed up last year for emails from Casey Research, they
send out a monthly email called "conversations with Casey".
It's mostly on investing in gold and commodities, and diversifying
into other countries before the fit hits the shan.

Always interesting and they've been right so far, gold I bought last
year is up 30%...even more interesting this month they mentioned their
interest in scifi writing and linked to Speculator's Fiction

They included a link to an Isaac Asimov short story, from the 50's but
still excellent and it's called the Last Question.

You can go read it and access the MultiVax at the same site.

All your factories are belong to us

2010-10-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

Over at the Belmont Club, wretchard points out the chinese
professor ad.
It's a pretty effective ad for me, it brings to mind the book "The Good Earth",
one generation builds, the next generation squanders.

This was all predicted before. The politician I most agreed with
was Ross Perot. He often sounded crazy to average people because
he presented things in a way that required a knowledge about how business,
systems and history work. His craziness has proved prescient. That
great sucking sound of jobs leaving happened, the jobs first went to
Mexico, then to China.

Other countries are playing mercantilism chess
while the USA is playing hope and change checkers, and we're
most likely fucked. I doubt the outcome will be like the chinese ad because
even though we owe more than we can ever repay the idea of
strategic default is slowly percolating up from the worst deadbeats,
to not so deadbeats, to middle class people caught in the housing
bubble and in 5 years it will be national policy.

If we default against a weaker rival that is powerless it won't be
a big deal. If we default against the most populous and powerful country
in the world it will be more a pimp/ho situation of "where's my money
bitch?" Probably better to strategically default now and start over
while we've got the military strength to stop angry collection agents.
Sort of a My Bodyguard technique. I don't have your money now, but if you'd like to complain please
speak to my friend the US Navy.

Thankfully here in Mexico we're able to watch some usa channels,
but we don't have to watch any political adds. it's all too depressing
for me.

You can't go to waffle house again

2010-10-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

I'm stuck in houston, i missed a flight back south
when the connecting flight had a mechanical problem.
Continental gave me a hotel voucher for a hotel, but
a shuttle from a different hotel came cruising up and asked
me if I have a voucher, if so I could use it there. Pretty
creepy, but sounded like a good deal and meant i wouldn't have
to stand on the curb anymore like a cheap hooker.

Continental gave me vouchers for meals tool
Since there's a waffle house in front of the hotel, and
when I worked in north lafayette 20 years ago, I ate
there almost every day that I wasn't offshore. Unfortunately
it wasn't too great, not as good as I remember. Doh, I wasted
a continental voucher.

Not too bad though I guess, compared to the book "the Road",
a waffle house sandwich would be much appreciated in post apocalyptic
america. I read that book on the flight up, and it scared the shit
out of me. worse than "IT" from stephen king. Made me miss
a night's sleep scary. Great book though.

New country song

2010-10-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

I was just passing through the security theater line
here in IAH, where everyone goes through the motions of being
safer, but a 4 year old could think of ways to get a weapon
through. The guy behind me grabbed his stuff off the conveyor,
and holding his shoes and his belt in one hand, a plastic bag and
a computer in the other and supporting his other bags under his
arms. He dropped it all on a chair and said "Fuck it. I ain't
gonna fly anymore."

Which hit exactly what everyone in the line was feeling too, and
would make a really terrific country song:

I got my belt and my boots in a grey plastic tray
my bag's in another one, sent on it's way
an overpaid security guard is telling me to wait,
I used to like traveling, but I'm beginning to hate
Fuck it. I aint gonna fly anymore.

Crappy little seats that are too small to sit
It's raining hard outside my cigarette won't stay lit
Six dollars a drink for stale old beer
the pilots up front probably too drunk to steer.
fuck it...etc.

Keep Looking Up!

2010-09-19T18:49:00.000-07:00

Watts up with that had a post pointing out that
Jupiter will be at opposition and at the closest approach to earth for
the next 12 years on the night of the 21st/22nd. He dedicated the post
to Jack Horkheimer who apparently died last month.

Dang.

When I was in school I always tuned in to whatever show was on
pbs at 10 pm so that I could see the Stargazer show at 10:30.

Jack Horkheimer's enthusiasm got me to learn most of the northern
hemisphere sky and always look up when I walk outside at night.
It's a comforting feeling that no matter where I am in the world I can
look up at night and see familiar stars and constellations.

...always, keep looking up!

taxes

2010-09-19T15:22:00.000-07:00

I've been reading the debate over on the Big Picture blog in
the comments about tax rates. Should they raise taxes, or just for
the "rich" people. I strongly believe that people will work less at higher tax rates. I know I don't work more for more money at my current tax rate. (Meaning
my real job that I make my salary for I'll work as hard as it takes, if someone offered me money to go to a rig and work I wouldn't even though I have in the past)

But I don't think our problem is a receipts problem that needs new taxes
but a spending problem. You can look at the above table, and see that with the tax cuts revenue decreased $145 billion from 2000 to 2004, spending increased $503 billion. Even with this glut of spending (Iraq, Afganistan, bloat) by 2007 the
deficit was only $160 billion and decreasing by $70B per year. If not
for the crash, we'd be in surplus now. So no new taxes.

Rivers rising

2010-09-18T19:05:00.000-07:00

The main effect of the storm was delayed by a day. There was 200 mm of
rain up in the hills above Cordoba and all of it is flowing down into
the rivers feeding into the Jamapa River. They are evacuating the subdivisions
close to the mouth of the river, using school buses, boats and helicopters.

Where's the US navy, it would be a good moment for some marine helicopters
to show up.

To help send money to the Mexican red cross:

http://www.cruzrojamexicana.org.mx/pagnacional/index.jsp

Storm over

2010-09-17T13:27:00.001-07:00

The rain has stopped and the storm seems past.
Someone is already out in the surf playing, and
the major problems outside seem to be trees down.
The satellite loop shows the storm starting to
dissipate over land. Good riddance

The hotel has some damage, part of the entry way
was ripped off and the skytv satellite isn't working.
I'd expect wherever the storm came ashore could be pretty damaged,
here there is Cat 1 damage and we're 30 miles south of landfall,
I hope everyone is ok where it came ashore.

Looking more carefully at the map here, the beach faces northeast,
so I need to rotate any wind directions I gave 45 degrees.

I'd give pretty crappy ratings to the news here, they barely
mentioned the storm until it was 3 hours from landfall, then
after it made landfall they were saying it's just the eye and much
worse is coming. (probably true for the people just north of landfall,
but not for here) That got the hotel to bring everyone down to the lobby,
if there was any real danger they were 3 hours too late.

No Salgan!

2010-09-17T10:10:00.001-07:00

The palm trees outside look exactly like the graphics that the
cbs new station used to use in New Orleans when there was a
hurricane watch, it always scared the heck out of me when I was
small....a hurricane is watching me? Yikes!

Local news is saying that we're seeing hurricane force
winds here in Veracruz boca del rio. The only recommendation
they are giving is don't go outside, the eye is touching the coast
and wind may drop off.

tv report:
Trees are down everywhere and electricity is out in some subdivision.
Some streets are flooding, with half a meter of water. "its an extreme situation"
and some palm trees are projectiles.

Wind is due east, blowing straight down the boulevard parallel to the coast.

The news is interviewing people going out to buy food, "si no compramos tortillas
falta para comer". Zero preparation here. Of course I have to walk downstairs
in a few minutes, if the hotel says they have no food then all I have is a
pack of almonds. doh.

Hurricane Blogging, Karl, 11 am

2010-09-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

Power just blinked off and came back on, i think the hotel
is on a generator now, the lights seem dimmer and the wifi
signal is almost zero. Hopefully the generator has diesel
for several days.

The government is now saying to stay in place if you're in
a strong structure. I think they are missing the idea of a
forecast that would have said yesterday to be ready to go to
a shelter. There's a problem with the coverage we get in the
USA, sensationalism from the weather channel and news ('we're
all gonna die'), but here it's too far the other way, they are
talking about preparations and the center of the storm is almost
onshore. The real problem will be flooding of already full rivers.

Here the wind appears to be from the southeast, the waves are
mostly blown down and flat, any crests are swept up by the wind
in a flash of spray. The corridor outside is filling up with water
from blowing rain, and the satellite tv is down, other than that
and the power, not much effect. If no more posts that means the
lights went off.

Karl, 9:30 am

2010-09-17T07:22:00.000-07:00

Note to self: Don't open the window in a hurricane.
I tried to crack open the window and stick my cell phone
out to film the surf. The wind looks calm because I'm in
the lee of the hotel, but as I crack open the window the
curtains were sucked out and billowed out towards the sea.

I got them back in, but it was a struggle, sort of a Lucille
Ball type fight, when I let go with one hand to push the window
shut a different piece of curtain went out the window.

The surf is laying down somewhat and the wind has changed from
an oooooo to a higher pitch, more like steel groaning. Spooky.

Not much on Mexican TV about the storm, they're still using up
their footage of the independence day parade. Different from US
news reports where it would be 24/7 stories on this 'possibly very
dangerous storm". (ok, i take that back, they just announced it's
category 4 and the whole state of Veracruz is on alert, a little bit
late to go on alert.)

Hurricane Blogging, Karl, morning update

2010-09-17T06:01:00.000-07:00

It's 8 o'clock in the morning, the wind is moaning
awoooooooooooooo, and the waves are higher than the
breakwaters that extend out perpendicularly from the beach,
but the waves are spent by the time they hit the seawall,
and that's 15 feet high, so no big deal.

The latest center update is 60 miles away, and the center should
pass 30 miles north of here. Looking out of the hotel to the
south out of the lee of the structure, the wind looks like
it is from the SSW, which means the center is almost due north
from here.

Hopefully the worst is past and things should be
nice and calm by lunch. There is one outlier on the models
that show the storm approaching the coast, then dribbling
back east. That would suck.

It's kind of neat watching the waves build up, the spray blows
off the top then it curls over. It's especially neat being
30 feet higher up inside a cinderblock building with internet
and hot coffee.

Hurricane Blogging, Karl

2010-09-16T22:50:00.000-07:00

it's 12:30 am and a pretty good squall is passing here in
Veracruz, wind sounds like it's 30-40 mph and the waves are
marching against the seawall in long white parallel lines.

Hurricane Blogging

2010-09-16T19:56:00.000-07:00

I'm in Mexico and strangely enough there's hurricane headed right
here. I've been watching weatherunderground when the hotel's
internet is up, and as usual the projected track is behind the model
response. Eg. An outlier model points off the main forecast, then the
other models start to agree with the outlier, then they adjust the
forecast track. The key learning is when just one model points in your
direction and you have an easy option to leave and go to Mexico City
or Little Rock...then start to make plans to go there.

In theory the forecast takes it north of here enough that it will just
be windy and rainy, but the drumbeat from the surf is getting louder
by the hour, by morning the waves will be crashing on the seawall.

It's a big hotel, built up high and pretty sturdy looking, at this point
probably safer than being on the road at night, so I'll hang out here.

bloglinks gone

2010-09-15T22:10:00.001-07:00

I took off all links to other blogs, blogrolling.com is triggering
a malware warning from google chrome. Not that anyone would notice,
this really is just a note to remind me to learn the real way to post
a blogroll, blogrolling appears to have issues.

Feliz Compleanos a Mexico

2010-09-15T21:24:00.000-07:00

September 16th is the 200th anniversary of the "Grito of Dolores"
that started the the war of Mexican independence from Spain.

My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen by three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once… Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! Death to the gachupines![3]

Reading the wikipedia entry for the war of Mexican Independance,
it sounds like the Spanish were more relentlessly evil in fighting
the rebels; Hidalgo who delivered the Grito was executed by the
Inquisition. I'm not sure if the spanish were more evil than the British
or just more competent at putting down revolution, but like the Indian
independence movement, the independence of the USA depended partially on
the British not being relentless and evil. (If the British had put more
effort to capturing and executing leading rebels in the first 2 years
when the continental army lost almost every battle, the revolution might
have fizzled.)

Anyway, the celebrations of the night before the Dia de la independenca
are on every channel on TV here and I should go out and drink beer, but I
have to catch a bus in the morning. (Nice bus with flat screens showing
movies, no chickens or goats)

A test, Government sucks

2010-09-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

I blogged about some recent travel woes last week
and posted by accident on my old blog url, complaining specifically
about orbitz.com and continental. Strangely enough Orbitz
posted a comment, then apologized and gave me a voucher.

I can see that my blogs have power over time and space now,
so as an experiment, I'd like to say that I think Obama is doing
a poor job as president, and the government sucks. Can I please
have a non-obama voucher?

Katrina Revisited

2010-08-30T10:26:00.001-07:00

e're in the New Orleans area for a few days and
it's the 5th anniversary of Katrina. We didn't see
much riding through town, it looks like NO east is still
pretty beat up looking though.

Watching the coverage of Katrina from a local news perspective
made me go back to see what I wrote at the time, and it made
me think I would have done a better job as governor or mayor
than those dodos did.

Mayor Nagin just ordered a mandatory evacuation, by
reading the legaleze version of the order instead of saying
more plainly it is time to leave, and if you don't leave no
one will come rescue you.

Hopefully it wasn't poorly executed and too late.

Governor blanco just mentioned that President Bush called to
make sure there was a mandatory evactuation.

She keeps mentioning being blessed, and she keeps repeating
herself and mentioning flying in and looking at the traffic.
Instead of a governor she is really just a traffic reporter
and a bad one at that.

I voted for Bobby Jindal, and I wish that fast talking guy had
won.

Airport floor blogging

2010-08-06T06:45:00.000-07:00

I'm traveling from europe back to the western hemisphere
and my laptop's battery died. There are power plugs in one
of the houston terminal b corridors of despair, but non are
near a chair so I must sit indian style on the ground, looking
like an unjolly budda.

I did miss a flight yesterday and get stuck in Rome. The
other option was waiting six hours then flying standby to spend
the night in Newark. For some reason I chose Rome over Newark.
I did a nice hike from the Vatican to the Pantheon, then
through all the fori and all the way south to some
(caracella?) pretty impressive ruins of a giant bathhouse.

I then walked back around towards the vatican following the Tiber.
A pretty good walk, it's possible to see almost all the sights of
Rome on an extended walking tour. it took me 4 hours total, including
gawking time. Rome isn't my favorite city, it's too frenetic, but
a nice quiet walk along the river certainly does raise it up on my
list of best places.

Pre-Cambrian consensus

2010-07-29T02:03:00.000-07:00

An interesting article in the NYTimes today on pre-cambrian animals

and geology. I remember from my freshman biology class the Cambrian

explosion, when all the different animals first appeared in the fossil record.

The NYTimes article shows how that record was changed, that now the

Ediacaran period has been added to the geologic timesscale before the

Cambrian, and some complex precambrian animals have been found.

The irony is the first discoverer of these animals submitted the information

to a conference and scientific journals, but was rejected.

Sprigg was excited by both the unusual appearance of the fossils and by their age, which he believed to be the beginning of the Cambrian, and made them the oldest animal forms yet seen. But despite their potential importance, Sprigg’s discoveries were ignored at an international geology meeting and his paper describing the fossils was rejected by the leading journal, . Sprigg moved on to other, more rewarding pursuits in the oil, gas, and mining industries.

This is the way that science should work, new physical information should eventually

cause the theories to be rewritten. What shouldn't happen is a consensus view should

prevent the collection of new information for 50 years. Even something that is very proven, such

as geological history can be updated with bette information. I don't think the NYtimes

noticed the irony, their normal website is all global warming, all the time.

Vacation - Napoli and Sorrento

2010-07-24T14:23:00.001-07:00

We went to Napoli

and sorrento on

vacation last week,

and we got to see

Pompeii, Capri

and the Amalfi

coast.

[view of Vesuvius

from Sorrento]

It's too hot in southern Italy to actually go outside during July, but we did anyway

leading to our visit to Pompeii being like the bataan death march.

We stayed a few days in Napoli, (best pizza in Italy) then moved down

the coast to Sorrento taking a hydrofoil across the bay. The hotel in Sorrento

was the Plaza that has a rooftop pool. I'd like a service that could pick you up

by helicopter in Pompei and just fly back and drop you in that pool.

Unfortunately there's no service yet, so we took the CircumVesuviano train

back around to Sorrento, which is a pretty hot dust covered crowd leaving

Pompei. Luckily the Plaza is only about 2 blocks from the station, so we were

safely submerged in cool water 15 minutes after getting back.

The key to getting the best experience out of Pompeii is to go to the Archealogical

museum in Napoli first. Our bad luck there was a strike or some protest

that meant it was open, but we'd have to cross a crowd of angry napolitanos to

get in; no thanks. Most of the best mosaics and casts of people killed in Pompeii

were there.

Also I didn't get up to Herculanum and Vesuvius itself. I figure that next time

we come back it will still be here. After our vacation in NYC in August 2001 I

thought we'd have another chance to go to the WTC and go up to the roof, since

it was rained out when we went. But no. In this case we should be pretty safe

that no jerkwad is going to fly a plane into mount Vesuvius (they are welcome to

try though) so we'll go back some day to Napoli to eat the excellent deserts and

go to the museum and up to the volcano.

2012 - Spoilers

2010-07-24T00:24:00.000-07:00

[Spoilers ahead, don't read if you haven't seen the movie]

I watched 2012 last night in HD and the movie did have some

fantastic effects, sort of like a giant chase scene with the Earth

in the pursuit role. I thought the plot was similar to deep impact

and day after tomorrow, but the actions of the government officials

were dumber and more venal.

If the big risk is giant tsunamis, and the solution is to build giant Arks

on mountains, why outsource building of ships in the mountains of Tibet

to the chinses? why would the chinese take our money, build the ships

and then not say "screw off" when the disaster happens. And charging

people 1Billion euros for a ticket seems pretty bs too, if I had several billion

dollars I could build a pretty kick-ass submarine for me and my friends

(ok, it could be a pretty small submarine).

But on the gripping hand, our normal government officials are pretty dumb

and pretty venal, and if there is some looming disaster that they know about

and we don't, we're pretty screwed. The government is just stupid enough

to fill the Arks with a bunch of 70 year old politicians and just male soldiers.

So I guess the movie was a true representation of what is likely. Doh.

Blues under the tuscan sun

2010-07-18T23:35:00.000-07:00

I made the last night

of the Pistoia blues festival yesterday
and i finally got to see Robert Cray live.

A really exelllent show, 5 hours of non-stop

blues. Robert Cray and Jimmy Vauhan both
got a little more than an hour, and

Bob put on a show that demonstrated
why he had top billing.

The Italian blues singers were excellent

too, singing in perfect southern
bluesy english, then speaking in italian

sounded pretty weired. Frencesco
Piu was the best blues singer, just one

man with an acoustic guitar, but he only
had 3 songs.

oh well, back to emilia romagna.

Updated back home, added pictures, links.

The other group that played that has a really big future is Cedric Burnside and

Lightnin' Malcolm from Holly Creek Mississippi. Just a Drummer and lead guitar

and they both sang, but they really tore the heck out of their instruments.

Baby rescued from bathwater

2010-06-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

A judge has blocked the deepwater drilling ban, which even

though I'm not a fan of judges doing anything other than say

guilty or not guilty, is a good thing. The blanket ban was a bad

idea because waiting six months just kicks the ball down the field

for 6 months, there's not much technology wise that is going to change,

and just deciding to stop drilling in deepwater is bad for everyone

involved (except maybe the pelicans)

I think that bp is guilty of stupidity and their design and operating decisions

probably caused this disaster, so there's some quick fixes that can allow

drilling to continue on most rigs:

- dual shear rams required on every bop

- Before every well is spudded, a joint of drillpipe needs to be sheared. (Before latching onto the wellhead, stop running riser, run drillpipe in the hole and shear off a chunk. repeat each well using the largest diameter drillpipe onboard)

- once per year all bop's tested on the surface. first test must happen within 90 days.

- test closure of bop's using the ROV's (apparently when they tried to close the shear rams after the blowout using the rov's the piping leaked. It was never tested.

- remote acoustic control of bop's required by 2012

- review all well designs so that they conform with standard best practice (it sounds like a lot, but there's only50 rigs drilling in deepwater)

-cement bond logs required over every section with hydrocarbons or with direct annular path to surface. Or just make it every section. Current law requires logs over the entire wellbore, just add a cbl.

- answer is no for all exemptions that are for saving operating time, eg changing riser mud out when the well is still live, using a single casing string instead of a liner with a tieback, etc.

Even if some of these requirements stop drilling for a little while, the current deepwater ban means they want us to wait 6 months while they make this list, then begin compliance with a list that will be similar. Start now. If the well is dead, pull and inspect all bop components and do a full bop test, install redundant shear rams and test their ability to cut drillpipe. If the bop doesn't pass then that rig is banned until it passes.

I see blue people

2010-06-20T22:56:00.000-07:00

We finally watched avatar yesterday on DVD. There are probably

some watusi tribesmen herding cattle that haven't seen it, but other

than them we were probably the last people to see it. Since it wasn't

in 3D I was expecting a "meh" type response, but I liked it.

The story inhabits a similar universe as Aliens, and even with all the

plot holes that I was expecting from the chatter on the interwebs, JC

got me to buy in and think of the blue guys as the good guys. Hopefully

it will be shown in 3d at theaters again sometime when we're back in

the western hemisphere.

Go USA!

2010-06-12T12:14:00.000-07:00

Sky TV wants me to pay more to watch the world cup games, my

all-inclusive calcio (football) package doesn't actually include any

games that I care about seeing. Oh well, I can still follow the game

on espn's gamecast, and since the US just tied england 1-1, I've got

a good feeling about this tournament.

The Saints won the superbowl and it was a cold enough winter to indicate

hell might have a heavy snow if not frozen over completely, so the next

miracle to occur will be when the USA wins the world cup. Yes we can!

Oily pelicans

2010-06-06T07:54:00.000-07:00

Watching videos of oil soaked pelicans I'm staring to get annoyed

with the response from both BP and the government. I realize the federal

government can do little now except clench jaws and shake fists, but

they could have allowed more berms to be build to protect the wetlands,

brought more booms in, etc. But that is the response I expect from the feds,

too slow, ponderous etc, and anyone that bets their lives or livelyhoods on

the federal repsonse is a fool. (doesn't matter which gang is in charge)

The thing that is pissing me off today is an article on the oil drum, which

always has interesting articles and commentary and has been following this

disaster in real-time. BP apparently had an incident back in 2003 where

the riser parted and the only thing seperating the well they were drilling and

a massive spill was the Blow-Out Preventers worked. They apparently didn't

learn anything from that and design and build any additional machinery

in case of a similar incident and a massive spill. So they learned nothing from

a very near miss.

In the end it will be a series of failures that caused this accident, bad planning

bad luck and finally the single point of failure, those "pinchers" failed and there

was no backup plan. The result will be we'll end up with the obamafication of the

bp portion of the deepwater production portfolo to pay for this disaster, to the

detriment of both the offshore oil industry in the US, and 3 or 4 years down the

line when we really need that production to prevent $200 oil prices the production

won't be there because it's being shut down and delayed by stopping the permitting

process now.

Early article on the Black Swan

2010-06-03T05:50:00.000-07:00

One of the books that has really affected my thinking over the past

few years is "The Black Swan" by Nassim Taleb. The Big Picture linked

to an article from 2002 before the Black Swan was written describing how

NNT made his money. Excellent article, required reading for people with

time machines that will go back to 1996.

airport bloggin

2010-05-22T00:08:00.000-07:00

Picture looking from

St sophia's to the

other monastery

at the end of the

street.

I'm at munich airport flying back home from Ukraine. Yesterday was a pretty

long day, took a train to Poltava and back in the evening. Everyone else went out

again for a last 4 hours on the town before a 6 am flight, but I p'd out and crawled

into bed for 4 hours of deeply needed sleep.

I just encountered my first really inefficient germans, while struggling through

security before coming through immigration. The security setup was running

like a well oiled barrel of monkeys with a football; taking 1/2 hour to get 1o people

through. Anyone with a close connection was screwed right there. I felt like

yelling 'what kind of germans are you?', but probably not a good idea.

Kiev blogging

2010-05-20T07:31:00.000-07:00

I've been in Kiev, Ukraine for most of this week. It's a nice city that
gives you a scare when you leave the airport, blocks of russian style
apartments that look like they were crappy when they were built. Then they
stop and you have to drive another 20 minutes to the city. Then downtown
is pretty nice.

Very few people speak any english here, but everyone speaks Ukrainian and
Russian. It's still a very low trust society, the hotel bill is paid when you
check in, and to charge something to your room you have to prepay a credit
to your account.

I have had more vodka this week then I've had since LSU. It kind of forces you
to drink the next night too, because the only thing that helps with the hangovers
I've had every day is a beer. I think my liver will fly back to Italy before me, trying
to make it's escape.

The one afternoon I had to play tourist and the weather turned crappy. I got to see
St Sophia and the museum, but it took me two tries to get in. They have a ticketbooth
in the big gatehouse you enter through, with a sign in english that says 50 hrivna
(pronounced "grivna")for a combination ticket. I gave the lady a 50, she gave me 45
back in change and a ticket.

I walked into the courtyard, an older guy was playing a sitar and singing in a really good
voice. When I tried to enter the cathedral, the lady said no, 'need ticket, giftshop'. grr.
I tried in the next building that looked like a giftshop, but it's a crappy museum with cool
amber pieces, but it's all in ukrainian so who knows what that's about. The equally fat
amber museum ladies say 'not right ticket, giftshop' and point to the entrance. I'm steamed
now, the old guy is still playing the sitar, but the music hurts my ears, he's probably
singing about americans that can't get in to see the cathedral. grrr. Back at the entrance
there's a little trailer to the left of the main gate. doh! it's has 6 price options, none
of them total to 50 hrivna, and the unlikely total to see everything is around 200 hrivna.
I give her a 100 and ask for everything and make finger motions that indicate everthing.
She gives me back 60 in change. I wanted to yell what the hell are you giving me, none of
the options total up to the price you charged me. grrr.

I walk back to the cathedral, the guy is still singing, I give him 5 hrivna, expecting him
to switch from his dirge to NY, NY; but he doesn't. The catheral is beautiful. It's one
of the few that weren't knocked down by the soviets, and it looks similar to San Vitale in
Ravenna, just not as old. (11 century vs 5th century.)

Everything here has a bureaucratic feel. Hopefully things will get better. There are a lot
of people here that are beautiful with nice cars, then the 50 and above generation all look
shabbier.

Euro in trouble?

2010-05-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

The Instapundit linked to an article talking about the Euro's current

steep decline down to 1.23E/$. When I started to panic two weeks ago,

and decided to send what spare cash I had back home the euro was at 1.33,

by the time I could wire the money and my stupid bank posted it, it was

down to 1.25. Which seemed dire last week, but now I'm happy to have

gotten 1.25 when it looks like the euro is about to fall off a cliff tomorrow,

I've seen links to articles at the Big Picture that say that the 1trillion euro

rescue is being used to rescue fatcat investers, the government is just

holding the tent flap while everyone with money gets out.

Glenn Reynolds also asked what will happen if the Euro breaks up? Well,

my understanding is that euro notes and coins are issued in each country,

so that my Italian euros have famous italian landmarks, and if the euro

cracks up my italian euros would become liras again, german euros would

become deutchmarks etc. I heard this during the crisis a couple of years

ago, and at the time I thought it might be good to go to Germany and take

out a few thousand german euros from an ATM. But too much trouble.

A better plan would be if the euro is really in trouble and goes below 0.8,

then make the germany trip, change dollars for german euros and then

exchange them for DM after the dust settles.

Deepwater Horizon and tuna fishing

2010-05-07T23:43:00.000-07:00

The New York times has a good story based on eyewitness accounts to

the deepwater horizon accident. (If a story is non-political, they tend to do

a good job and I'll read it all day, on politcal stories they are slanted too far

to the left)

They have the same problem that all non-oilfield people have, they describe

the operation as:

The job of sinking the well had gone relatively smoothly — extending the well, pipe by pipe, until it punched through to the oil below. Then the crew shoved a final long stretch of pipe deep into the reservoir.

The problem with this description is it implies that the pipe is shoved

into the reservoir, like pushing a straw into mud. The reality is that

each hole section is drilled with a bit, then casing is run into the hole

then progressively smaller bits are used for the next section, followed

by smaller casing. Each string of casing is cemented by pumping cement

down the inside of the pipe, then up the annular space. The shallower

strings of casing have cement that goes all the way back up to the

wellhead on the seafloor. The deeper sections might only

have enough cement to isolate the openhole section of casing.

Then the times goes into the speculation that everyone is making,

and they start off with attacking the cementing company, which just

happens to be haliburton. They were using a foamed cement

that is normal practice for all cementing companies to use in deepwater,

because it is low enough in density to not fracture the formation while

being pumped. I wonder if they publish this speculation just because

it's haliburton, when it's been several years since haliburton sold off

Brown and Root, the object of liberal's ire.

A really interesting link to fishing forum with a post from an eyewitness

from a fishing boat. They witnessed something horrible, and tried to

help but were warned off by bigger boats, but in true coonass fashion:

We stayed a mile off the fire and searched/listened for missing ppl for 4 hours. We saw nothing. 20 or so commercial liners eventually brought Medics and oxygen for survivors. Helicopter came for search and transport. All the other facts you probably already know about; via News. The 11 missing people in 'mind' I hope slipped away in a safety boat, but in reality I doubt they are alive. This is a sad thing to say, but if you would have seen the explosions you wouldn't believe anyone of the 126 would have survived it! I pray for all of them and their families! We left at morning to make our way in, we were 60 miles offshore and gas was running low. We stopped at Elf on the way in and filled the ice chest.

The tuna were busting on top water and we couldn't resist. We left the half way point in hopes to make it home. The starboard motor ran out of gas at the very mouth of the river, but fortunately we had a spare gas tank on board! We made it to Venice at about 3pm on Wednesday and began cleaning the fish.

Tom Clancy at it again

2010-05-07T14:24:00.000-07:00

One of the first things I thought of on 9/11 after hearing that

the planes were crashed by terrorists was that those guys copied

the idea from Tom Clancy. Yesterday when the markets went tits

up, and it was explained a fat finger followed by program trading

it seemed like maybe someone else read "Debt of Honor"

"Even as the military mission begins, the cabal engineers the collapse of the American stock market by exploiting flaws in the program trading systems at major brokerages, and then deletes all trade records. With a massive economic crisis, and panic and chaos in America's homeland, it is hoped that America will be too distracted to quickly respond to military adventures."

Maybe the taliban has a trading desk and sold a billion shares of PG causing the

crash. I suggest that americans stay alert. If your broker recently spent 5 months in

Pakistan. has a 'death to the american satan' poster (or at least a serious knee injury

to the great satan poster) and fat fingers, then be alert.

Deepwater Horizon and similarities to Katrina

2010-05-03T15:07:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to see some calls in the blogosphere and the news that Obama

should have reacted sooner to the disaster in the gulf. There are some similarities

and some differences between this disaster and when Katrina hit, and in the

same waythat it was unfair how much blame Bush took for Katrina, maybe we

shouldn't throw too many stones at Obama.

For the It's Obama's fault side:

This was a disaster out at sea, in federal waters, no one else had any regulatory oversight

There was no collateral damage like Katrina where the major roads and interstates were

cut at multiple places, the feds had free access all the way to Venice, LA.

There was no raging storm blocking everything.

There was full information available, the people who knew best what was happening were

available for interviews after less than a day at sea.

For the it's not Obama's fault side:

The federal government does not have a magic wand to sooth all hurts instantly.

From where I sit, the leak didn't seem very bad for several days. At first it seemed

like the oil was coming from fuel onboard. (very similar to Katrina, where the storm passed

and everything seemed ok for several hours.)

BP was making noises very similar to the ones fema made before Katrina, 'we're

prepared, we've got miles of booms', etc.

Reading over my partial lists, the key difference here is that during Katrina there

was a bad ass storm that destroyed infrastructure from east of Baton Rouge to

Florida, short of dropping the 82nd airborne into N.O. there wasn't much more

that was possible and due to politcal problems the Governor of LA never asked

for help until later, a requirement for federal troops to come, so really it was a city

and state problem.

The deepwater horizon was a purely federal problem, the states have no input

to safety in federal waters, get only a small portion of money from the 8g fund

and aren't involved in licensing, safety reviews or inspections. The Feds have complete

authority over the operation, can stop drilling, intervene in well designs, after the

fire had full visual coverage of the disaster and had people on the ground while

the disaster was unfolding.

I'm changing my answer, it's Obama's fault.

(I joke, I joke, I kid, I kid, if I offend I'm sorry. I don't think he bears any more responsibility than bush did for the sloppy response to Katrina)

Black Swan comes home to roost

2010-05-01T12:52:00.000-07:00

Anthony Watts at What's up with that blog has an excellent
essay with photos showing what happened at the Deepwater
Horizon, some of the best information about what happened out
there, when no one from BP has given any details about what
was going on at the time of the disaster, and I've given up on
speculating because I feel similar to after 9/11; it's hard to believe
such a big rig burned up and sank taking 11 men with it.

What is clear to me is this was a Black Swan. BP's emergency
response plan apparently said there was low risk of pollution and
low risk of a catastrophic accident. The definition
of a black swan is when one is operating in extremistan where large forces,
monetary flows or pent-up pressures are operating. Where on the frequency
axis, if you make an estimate of the rate of negative events you are probably
wrong, with disastrous results, and where the events are 'rare' enough that
we don't really know what the frequency distribution is, or if it has a shape at all.

Where those two axis' collide is the forth quadrant,
where it is dangerous to assume that a low frequency event will be rare
enough to not affect you, and when you are wrong people are killed,
giant structures are reduced to pillars of flame, economic systems destroyed,
cats and dogs sleep together. [This is all covered by Nassim Taleb in
The Black Swan, and more precisely in an essay called The Forth Quadrant,
which has to be one of the most important articles ever published for
free on the internet. I added the dogs and cats]

from NNT's
the fouth quadrant.

The wonderful thing about the oilfield is it is where economics and engineering
geology and mathematics are all applied to create money. There are no evil
shadow organizations needed, just the simple rule that if a project will make
more money than the discount rate plus some stated excess profit taking into
account the probability that you'll get nothing in return, the project is drilled.

...

Before anyone says that the operator (BP) or the rig owner was incompetent
or negligent, the problem doesn't come from the lack of hard work or oversite,
but of thinking that we can operate in the forth quadrant without getting burnt
occasionally. We will get hurt and accidents will happen as long as men dare to
sail the sea in ships, fly to the moon or drill the ocean depths.

.

Guests of the Ayatollah

2010-04-25T11:25:00.000-07:00

Today is the anniversary of the Desert One disaster

during the attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran.

A fantastic excerpt from Mark Bowden's book on

this event is here.

How many things would be different if that mission had

succeeded? No 911, gulf wars 1 and 2, no president Reagan?

Here in one paragraph was a key problem with the mission:

The question of what to do with the passengers was relayed all the way to the White House. The president and his staff were deliberately going through the late-afternoon motions of a typical workday but secretly hanging on every update from the desert. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national-security adviser, relayed the unexpected problem of the bus to the president, and Carter agreed that the only thing to do was to fly all the Iranians out that night on one of the C-130s and then return them to Iran when the mission was complete.

Deepwater Horizon

2010-04-23T04:44:00.000-07:00

Rigzone's report was wrong, the 11 missing men on the deepwater horizon

weren't found, they are still missing.

The rig finally sank as can be seen in this slideshow from the times picayune

in New orleans.

Fire on the Deepwater Horizon

2010-04-22T04:54:00.000-07:00

There was a blowout and fire out on the Deepwater Horizon
which was working for BP in Mississippi Canyon 252, which is the
Maconda field. From Rigzone, it appears that they've found everyone,
yahoo is still saying 11 men are missing though, so I hope Rigzone is
correct

They were trying to plug and abandon the well after an exploration well,
I'd guess they did a well test and were trying to set a plug afterwards so
that they can move the rig to the next well, and either they swabbed in
a kick by moving the drillpipe up too quickly, or perhaps they thought they had
the well killed after the well test and it bit them in the ass. (I have no idea
what happened, i'm just speculating).

It's interesting to me because it scares the hell out of me, the idea of having to
evacuate from a burning rig is pretty much the worst case for the oilfield. On
land you can just run away, in shallow water maybe swim to land or another rig,
but in deepwater there is usually nothing within miles, and the water is 5000' deep.
To carry out an evacuation and not lose anyone is an amazing feat, and depends completely
on the professionalism of the workers of transocean and bp.

[picture from

Rigzone, better

version there)

mmmmmm, lunch.

2010-04-14T04:07:00.000-07:00

I just had a super good lunch at la tavolaccio, just their ordinary lunch special of
spedinni quatro formaggio for prima piatti and tonnato for secundi, piu patata al forno.

Freaking excellent. Tonnato is veal sliced thin covered in a sauce made from tuna
an mayonaise (i think). spedinni are star shaped tubular pasta that are about the
same size as kraft macaroni and cheese, but just cooked al dente with a white cheese
sauce made from 4 cheeses. Plus a half liter of wine. (doh!)

What I like about italian food is the good food isn't the outliers, I don't think there
are many 4 star italian restaurants serving minute portions of food, but the average
places are so good. Of course, this is where the truckers go too, so there's some universal
law at work of 'eat where the truckers eat'.

Lunch was topped off by a nice coffee. I think the big difference between new arrivals and
people that have lived in italy a while is the way they drink coffee. First of all, there
is a national law that says no cappuccino after lunch (or after any food, depending who you
ask). Second is when I first arrived I saw the tiny espressos and drank them in a gulp.
After a while, the sip of coffee in the espresso cup becomes 4 sips and then the real miracle
is when you realize that there is a fifth sip that include all the sugar that you put in the coffee.
(no sweet and low here).

I don't know how I'll make it back to drinking normal drip coffee. Once we get home I'm
afraid I'll be a tea drinker.

We know you have a choice when you fly...

2010-04-14T01:15:00.000-07:00

Let slip the Professors of War

2010-04-10T00:48:00.000-07:00

Mark Bowden has a profile of General Petraeus over at
vanity fair. Excellent as everything that Mark Bowden writes,
hopefully it's a profile of the next President.

Facing Congress, he didn’t waver. It was the same now as on the day Bush had met with him privately in the Oval Office after the Senate confirmed his selection for what most felt was an impossible mission. The general had said, “Mr. President, this isn’t double-down.… This is all-in.” It was an expression that would be repeated often within his inner circle. They were staking everything on the outcome. There could be no second thoughts, no looking back.

Tirana

2010-03-23T10:10:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm in albania and tripadvisor was right about the traffic noise
in Tirana, the sound of the cars passing almost overwhelms the sound
of the call to prayer from the mosque down the street. The lack of traffic
noise at 5 am means the morning call to prayer sounded like it was right
outside my window. Too early, I don't think I have it in me to be so devout.

From what I've seen today, the entire country looks like it's under construction,
things are definitely booming. The strangest sight was the number of bunkers,
nearly every house out in the countryside has what looks to be a machine gun
pillbox left over from the communist days when america was going to attack any
day. It did make me yearn for the days of yore when the carter administration
would gobble up small countries and grind their bones for our bread.
[update: they were worried about the soviets invading too. yeah us!]

I'd bet in 10 more years this will look like any other european country that has
a mediteranean seafront. The people here have advantages; everyone speaks
Italian and some english, they'll zoom ahead of the rest of the eastern european
countries.

(updated from vienna)
I walked around Tirana a little
before flying out, the town is much
better looking than Bucharest,
just because the Mayor took the
initiative to have buildings painted
different colors. Same drab
communist buildings...all
dressed up.

Albania will be banging in
5-10 years. (buy now)

Now I'm in Vienna, and after 2 beers ready to pass out. Sono stanco.

Devils at deem and pass

2010-03-21T03:34:00.000-07:00

Watching the political machinations in washington as the deemocrats
sneak the healthcare bill through, it looks to me like the economy is going to
have to get much worse before it can get better. They are finally going to
kill the goose that lays the golden eggs of american exceptionalism.

Every country has smart, well educated people with new ideas, but what I think
made america different was that small percentage of innovators that combine
that education, intelligence and new ideas with ridiculously hard work that
in most countries doesn't pay off so it doesn't happen.

Here in italy people are smart, elegant and well educated, but once you reach a certain
level of income one has to pay 45% income tax plus 9% health care tax. If one has
a choice between working hard or going up to the mountains and skiing with other
beautiful people, most people here go for the skiing, the beach, the museum or
the 4 hour lunches.

Another component of america's exceptionalism is fear. If you know that you are
working without much of a net, or the idea of going on hands and knees for a handout
sickens you then working extra hard to make sure that you stay employed and get
ahead is normal. As the government becomes the source of all things, healthcare, mortgage payments, and discount cars it will become much easier to not work extra hard to get ahead but to take up the 'they pretend to pay us so I'll pretend to work mentality'.

These effects will happen much more rapidly than expected, as soon as people start
to get paychecks with less than half of gross income productivity will decline, tax revenues
will then decline leading to higher tax rates with everything spiraling downward pretty fast to
default on a debt that is pretty unpayable at this point anyway. So maybe things will
work out for the best.

Long strange trip

2010-03-19T03:18:00.000-07:00

I'm traveling this week and I think I overdid it and have lost
the will to travel ever again. I went to Bucharest-Ploesti-Constanta-
Bucharest-Istanbul-Ankara-Istanbul-Bucharest-Forli and just
today I've been through a security checkpoint 5 times.

I was just so tired that when I checked in here in bucharest I thought
there was a mirror behind the counter, instead it's see-through to the other
side, the girl on the other side of the counter just looked almost like the
girl in front of me with her back turned towards me. Finally, the girl on
the other side of the counter turned around and in a split second before
I realized there was no mirror, it looked to me like the counter girl in front
of me had seperated from her reflection. I guess I'm tired.

But heading home now.

A good beginning

2010-03-14T14:56:00.000-07:00

A link from The Big Picture led me to a column from Senator
Ted Kaufman of Delaware that lays out a plan for rebuilding
the financial system. It sounds pretty sensible to me, this whole
idea of Too big to fail should mean a company needs to be broken up
before it fails.

It's too long to excerpt, but here's the highlights:
The Volcker Rule: A Good Beginning
Glass-Steagall for the 21st Century
Size and Leverage Constraints: Cutting the Mega Banks and Shadow Banking System Down to Size

Hopefully something will be done to wind back the clock to the 1970's, if
there's another financial crash I don't think the USA has much left on it's credit
cards to do another bailout.

This sounds bad

2010-02-22T13:39:00.000-08:00

Over 50 Turkish commanders held over coup plot
Police in simultaneous operations in eight cities detained 21 generals and admirals, including ex-deputy chief Gen. Ergin Saygun, former Air Force chief Gen. Ibrahim Firtina and Navy Chief Adm. Ozden Ornek. The rest were mostly colonels.
They are also accused of conspiring to plan shooting down a Turkish warplane to trigger armed conflict with Greece in a bid to destabilize the Turkish government. The military strongly denies the allegations.

Erdogan declined to comment Monday on the raids, saying they had been carried out on prosecutors' orders. However on Sunday, Erdogan said his government had not given "a chance to those who tried to fly a course for Turkey outside the law."

I have no idea what the reality is from this article, it's either the Turkish military planning on asserting control again or the Islamist government framing military members, but whatever is happening it sounds bad for Europe and for NATO.

E pur se muove

2010-02-21T13:43:00.000-08:00

The Gormogons have a great post explaining the denialist position
for global warming:

Further, when we hear outlandish statements that cold waves are the result of GW, and that heavy precipitation is the result of GW, and that record snowfall is the result of GW, we really question whether you are stopping to think before you speak to the press. Yeah, some science makes no sense at first: all galaxies are moving away from the others, so that if you pick a random galaxy, every other galaxy appears to be moving away from it? But then you paint dots on a balloon and inflate the balloon...and suddenly the crazy concept is perfectly obvious. We are awaiting these analogies and demonstrations. Because until they arrive, you look foolish.

Maybe if your data checked out. But day after day comes another revelation of a flawed study, or that temperatures stopped increasing, or that something was incorrectly recorded. Maybe you should just stop and start over from scratch with a fresh approach. In football, this is called a punt. Science tries them all the time, but evidently only in other fields.

Hence, in a nutshell, here is what the average Denialist actually believes (and get ready to be surprised at how off-base your assessment of our concerns could be):

Denialists believe that climate science is a new and emerging field, with new discoveries and realizations frequently changing basic assumptions. We understand that observations (in the water, on the ground, in the air) conflict and often indicate a fluid and changing nature. We fully accept that some temperatures may be increasing, that atmospheric composition could be affected by man, and that these have long-term effects which may be disastrous for millions of people.

... and they continue on from there, go read the whole thing.

I'd also add that I agree with the Jerry Pournelle point of view, we don't have enough data, we
should be spending more on data. He often references Bayesian analysis, where as more
data arrives you get a better answer (we use it for decoding noisy communications from
downhole tools)

The warmists are still stuck on the precautionary principle, because there's a risk of something
bad happening we should panic and destroy our economies in the hope of preventing this
bad thing. Even as each drip drip drip of exposed bad data tells me that the bayesian
probability of something bad happening is less and less and the correct thing to do is
gather more data.

I'm not that worried about Co2, and though I think we are close to peak oil production there
are plenty more hydrocarbons available (maybe at higher prices). We should be working
on reducing imports of hydrocarbons and trying to find the economic green energy answer
that solves our energy import answer and not the global warming answer.

Go Saints!

2010-02-07T16:32:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to stay awake to watch the superbowl. I have to get up and
work in a few hours but luckily the well has pushed a few hours and I can
at least watch the game at home.

Update 3:45 am: Saints Win! Hot damn. I know it's foolish to follow a
sports team over 4 decades, none of the players are the same, nor coaches,
nor owners. But I'm the same, and all the rest of the fans are still the same,
the fans and the city are what make a team, players come and go, but the
city is still there. Congratulations Big Easy!

Hell freezes over, the ghost of Buddy D. wears a dress

2010-02-01T10:32:00.000-08:00

From the times picayune comes the story of the "Buddy D. Dress
Parade", the photos include one of Bobby Hebert wearing a dress
and a blond wig. A parade in honor of Buddy Diliberto who was
a local sports anchor who swore he'd wear a dress when the saints
went to the superbowl.

Image from Buddy's
broads.com

Hopefully Buddy Diliberto is smiling wherever he is. Old flannelmouth
was always a strong Saints supporter by doing strong news reporting and
not just rah rah. (there was plenty of rah rah too though).

He was the first sports reporter in the city to wear a bag on his head when
the Saints went 1-15 and officially became the Aints, and he and Hap Glaudi
were the original TV sports reporters I remember from the early '70's, the
ABC channel would bring in a different face every couple of years, but they
couldn't take the pain of reporting in a city with such crappy teams.

(update)From Peter Finney's column in the Times Picayune some malaprops:

Meaning to say "secondaries,'' he once announced "quarterback Dan Fouts retired today after 17 seasons of terrorizing NFL secretaries.''
And there were those throwaway lines:
"That's a mute point.''
"That's just the chip of the iceberg.''
"The Saints led in time of obsession.''
"If the Saints can make the trade, it will be a good one, like manana from heaven.''
"Old Dominion'' became "Old Dominican.''
When it came to injuries, a player was out with "a torn lee nigament.'' On another day, a shoulder operation might be called one to remedy "a torn rotary cup.''
A visit to Children's Hospital once prompted the observation about "those courageous boys and girls lying there, hooked up to their RVs.''
Buddy D sailed through his sea of squirrels, with passion, with frustration, with optimism, always with a smile.

Snow day

2010-01-31T02:21:00.000-08:00

It's snowing pretty hard here today, starting with the small
granules of snow and building up until huge clumps of snow are falling,
looking like someone overturned several thousand baskets of white
feathers.

Not much seems to be accumulating though on our street, I would
imagine that outside of town there is probably around 6" on the ground,
in town there's bubkus on the roads I can see from our windows.

It would much better if we had some kind of sweets to eat, we're pretty
well stuck inside.

Pigs fly, hell freezes over, cats and dogs, etc

2010-01-25T00:09:00.000-08:00

The Saints won
last night giving them
a trip to the superbowl
for the first time ever.

I'm the same age as the
saints and it's taken my
entire life to reach the
big game, and it's about
freakin' time.

who dat say dey gonna
beat dem Saints? Who
Dat, Who dat.

Thanks again President Bush

2010-01-21T13:48:00.000-08:00

I just watched a clunky B-movie called Deterrence, starring Kevin Pollack
as the president of the USA, Timothy Hutton as an advisor and one of the hobbits
from LOTR's as a local redneck. It's a pretty bad movie that I was semi watching
by flipping back to Top Gear to see their space shuttle launch (super cool)

The movie was interesting because it was made in 1999 starring a couple of
left wing actors and written and produced by French guys, yet the premise
of the movie was that Iraq was reinvading Kuwait, we threatened them with
nukes to stop and they responded by launching nuclear bombs at us.

It contained a lot of information that was common knowledge at the turn of
the century, the president of Iraq was Uday Hussein (so we couldn't just wait
for Saddam to drop dead), Iraq was trying for years to get NBC WMD's and they
had them, and were ready to attack Kuwait or the US at any time.

It was just another data point that tells me almost all of the Bush lied meme was just
cynical political posturing by democrats scrambling for power. Things that were common
knowledge in 2000 became hard to track intelligence data points pumped up by
political pressure by 2004.

Bush instead took the much harder decision not to nuke bagdad, or conventionally
bomb them for days or weeks as Clinton did, but invade. I would have nuked them
from orbit, or tomahawked them for months before risking american soldiers, but
Bush didn't. He took the non-cynical more moral decision that I still think will have
long term positive effects, for Iraq at least, even though it cost us a hella lot of money.

Once the glow has fully faded from The One, the comparisons will be even clearer.

Who Dat!

2010-01-16T16:36:00.000-08:00

I doubted the saint's head coach a few weeks ago when it seemed like
there was no way that losing 3 games in a row was part of a cunning plan,
but it looks like it was a pretty cunning plan. The Saints beat the cardinals
like a drum 45-14 and they are going to the NFC championship game.

Just beat Dallas or Minnesota, and we're off to the Superbowl.

Go Saints!

2010-01-16T13:50:00.000-08:00

The Saints just started playing Arizona, It's already 7-7 and it
looks like both defenses have stayed home and could be a 60 point
game, maybe a great playoff game, but I hope it's a blowout for the
saints.

I'm drinking a white spritzer wine that a friend gave me made up
in Veneto, and opening a bottle of wine is as much preperation as I
want to make for a Saint's playoff game. The first time they went to
the playoffs back in '92(?), they were crushed so completely that the
game beer became consolation beer, and we ended up renting a movie
by halftime.

Hopeful but nervous, excited but frightened. I'm enjoying the Yin and Yang
of saints football, and I don't want to enjoy it sober. Who dat!

Cold weather

2010-01-10T14:18:00.001-08:00

A column in the timesonline from the UK mentions that the UK Met service
is saying that statistically this will be one of the warmest winters ever. Of course
that's probably averaging in the southern hemisphere, so even after what seems to
me to be the coldest winter since around 1988, when one of the first times that I walked
out onto the flightline I stepped on a frozen puddle, flipped ass over teakettle and
dropped a tech order book that exploded into 1000 pages of FOD.

Hopefully people will start to come to their senses and ignore some of the stupider
climate change nonsense, like switching to 100% windpower that would lead to
periods like last weeks low temperatures killing thousands of people as they freeze
in their houses. High Pressure = low temp = no wind gives the coldest and hottest
days with lowest available power.

We need to be moving away from burning oil and gas for heat, but what we need to
move to for the grid has to be something that can be switched on and off, not waiting
for the breath of god to turn it on and off. There needs to be an intermediate
compromise that doesn't involve name calling, and a technical plan that is less
of trying to appease an angry Al Gore and more of a detailed look at what is available
and what will be available in 10, 20 and 30 years.

Build more nuke plants, study fusion and advanced storage and hydrogen. Instead of
cap and trade that looks like it will just enrich the Al Gores of the world, I'd put an oil
tax at some level below where prices are today, say $75 per barrel. In the USA I'd make
it an import tax. If prices are high it won't have any effect. If prices go low then low oil
prices won't destroy the economics of alternative energy or nuke power, and in the USA
it won't necessarily destroy the american oil industry again. ( or worse than it is right now)

A cunning plan

2010-01-04T04:16:00.000-08:00

According to Jeff Duncan at the times picayune, Sean Payton
is an evil genius and losing the last 3 games was part of the plan
for the Saints to win global domination.

link to photo

I'm not buying that, I'll give him yesterday's game, almost no one
played and I turned it off after the 2nd quarter. But I don't
think this is part of a strategy to manufacture a crises and motivate
this time, I think it's a crises and we'll see how good a coach Sean Payton
is if the Saints can win a playoff game. If they follow the current trend
I'll be watching the colts play the vikings in the superbowl.

Dr Evil I presume

2010-01-04T03:53:00.000-08:00

The Gormorgan's Notorius EV
posted a photo of Obama speaking to
Joe Biden and both wearing tuxedos
looking like James Bond villains
trying to figure out what step 2 is.

Step 1. Kill Bond
Step 2. ?
Step 3 Rule the world and get
control of ALL the healthcare.

Here's another photo showing
the president looking like he's toasting
the hatching of another evil scheme.

Bwahahahahahahahhaahah.

photo credit

I told you so too.

2010-01-03T14:01:00.000-08:00

Mike at Cold Fury links to an article from IBD:

Before the election of 2008, few Americans described Obama as liberal, let alone socialist. Polls typically reflect media opinion, and the media by and large portrayed Obama as a moderate. Now his far-left views are obvious, and for the first time most Americans see Obama as governing from the left.

What we warned of then is now governance, though we take no pleasure in the validation. The pending government takeover of the medical system (one-sixth of the economy), as well as the ownership stakes taken in autos and banking, not to mention the demonization and planned destruction of the private insurance industry, were foretold by us, along with the accumulation of power to the federal government in the name of “crisis” upon “crisis.”

I share some of the blame for this too, I didn't vote, I didn't get my ballot and mail it in, figuring

that my ballot would go to Texasn anyway, a sure win for Mcain.

Here's what I wrote before the election:

It's not the color of Obama's skin that bothers me, it's that I don't agree with
anything he says or anything that he plans to do. I also tend to think that he
was sent by someone in the chicago machine, or sent by a diabolical marxist organization
that is bent on undermining a free and capitalist america or sent as a product of
an extremely liberal education that was then baked in an oven of an anti-american
preacher. All those ideas might be believable or laudable in some situations, but
I don't want them as part of the makeup of the president of the united states.

sorry America.

Number of the Year

2010-01-02T20:47:00.000-08:00

Over at the ever valuable Numberwatch, the Numby awards have been
given out and the number of the month, year and decade announced. The Numby
award for person of influence is Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri.

[shown here accepting
his Numby]

from Wolf Howling:

The man above, appropriately attired in the Chairman Mao outfit, is Rajendra Pachauri. Whether you realize it or not, he is of immense importance to you. He is rich. He is immensely powerful. He has financial interests hidden under a hundred different rocks. And if he gets his way, he will be stealing money out of your pocket and significantly lessening your quality of life. Remember that as you read this post.

EU referendum is covering this as well when they take a break from exposing the
inadequacy of the british MOD.

I'm always amazed that the left/green/communist interpretation of the world always
includes evil oil men suborning governments and destroying the world, but is blind to
things like the man in charge of the IPCC having vested interests in global warming
being true, whether there is any evidence for it or not.

I just had to repeat our company's training on avoidance of conflict of interest and ethics,
and to avoid even the appearance of corruption I can't accept gifts worth more than $200
from suppliers, or own stock in oil companies because I could conceivably have access to
data that could give me inside information. And I'm just a nobody so far down on the org
chart that I have a dashed line connecting me to the janitor.

Dr Pachauri doesn't just have the appearance of conflict of interest, a simple google search
shows that he's a direct beneficiary of the policies he's supposed to be investigating. I prefer
some good honest oilfield fatcats be in charge of the IPCC.

The Number of the year was also presented, and it is the number one.

One stands for the Norwich One, the whistleblower who revealed the contents of emails and program files from the CRU at the University of East Anglia . He provided much solace to those who attempt to continue the tradition of sceptical science, by providing evidence that what they had deduced about what this and associated outfits were up to was, in fact,

congratulations to all the winners.

Instalaunched

2010-01-01T19:09:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a link from Glenn Reynolds I just quadrupled the
number of hits I've gotten in the past 3 months in the past 3 hours.
Wow. Very potent linkage.

Thanks for visiting. Please don't be offended by the blog title,
a coonass is just a person from Louisiana of cajun descent. The most
interesting things here are when I was liveblogging about Katrina, and
when I was hotairlaunched pointing out the slant about Haditha from
the Times of London. Otherwise mostly travel and drunkblogging with
some political rants thrown in.

First attack of the new year.

2010-01-01T16:08:00.000-08:00

Danish Police just shot a somali man a man who was trying
to attack Kurt Westergaard in Denmark. This was the cartoonist
who drew the cartoon of mohammed with a bomb in his turban. This is on bbc
tv right now, of course they won't show the actual cartoons they are
talking about.

No word on the religion of the attacker.